admin, Author at Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce

IC4 Autumn Workshops, Seminars and Cloud Clinics Schedule

The Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce (IC4) is a multi-institutional Technology Centre, funded by Enterprise Ireland and the IDA, whose mandate is to carry out applied research in areas of cloud computing that are chosen by its industrial members.

IC4 holds regular events to disseminate results from the business and technical research that it carries out, as well as to promote the usage of cloud computing by Irish businesses. Details of all scheduled events can be accessed at http://www.ic4.ie/events/

Workshops

October 15 ^th : “Cloud Computing – Increasing IT Effectiveness in Delivering Business Services”

Room Q301, DCU Business School (2pm to 6pm)

Register at: http://www.ic4.ie/event/cloud-computing-increasing-it-effectiveness-in-delivering-business-services/

This workshop is being hosted in conjunction with the IMCA (The Institute of Management Consultants and Advisers). This event is a free event and is open to all companies who have an interest in understanding how cloud computing can be applied to increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of their business.

The event will take the form of five, 30-minute presentations, which will be made by IC4 industry members and researchers, highlighting different use cases for cloud computing.

The presentation topics are (and may be subject to change):

‘Is cloud based office productivity software right for your business’ (Microsoft Inc.)
‘What is the right cloud architecture for my business’ (Egenera Inc.)
“Workflow automation in the Open Cloud” (Translation.ie)
‘Using data analytics to leverage value from your business data’ (Emfasize Ltd.)
‘Safeguarding your business data in the cloud’. (IC4)

November 10 ^th : “Interoperability and the Open Cloud”

DCU Business School (2pm to 5.30pm)

Register at; http://www.ic4.ie/event/interoperability-and-the-open-cloud/

Cloud computing is helping unleash the power of IT in every aspect of running a business and is now widely seen as having the potential to make a significant contribution to the future growth in world gross domestic product. For cloud computing to deliver these anticipated benefits, software applications must be interoperable and data must be portable across cloud platforms. This will allow cloud consumers to use ‘off-the-shelf’ cloud services and will accelerate the creation of an innovative and cost efficient environment.

Over the past year IC4 has invested significant research resources in helping to improve interoperability and portability. The purpose of this workshop is to both update members and the community on the results of its research as well as to create awareness of the broader developments in this area. IC4 has arranged for both industry and academic speakers to talk to the following topics:

The ‘TOSCA’ Standard – TOSCA’s goal is to advance an interoperability standard that will make it easier to deploy cloud applications without vendor lock-in, while maintaining application requirements for security, governance, and compliance. (IBM)
“How Open is Openstack” (Dell)
“Open Cloud Standards” (Intel)
“Interoperability on a cloud Mobile Application Platform. (Feedhenry)
“Disaster Recovery between different cloud platforms” (IC4)

Edelman Breakfast Seminars

In conjunction with Edelman, IC4 will host a series of Breakfast Seminars, which will be held on the last Thursday of every month.

Venue: The Hibernian Club, St Stephen’s Green, from 8am to 9am

Register at: http://www.ic4.ie/events/

October 30 ^th : “ Social media and big data: how can it inform business strategy?”

Speaker: Dr. Theo Lynn (IC4)

November 27 ^th : “How Big Data, the Cloud and Viewer-Aware Displays are disrupting the DOOH advertising market.”

Speaker: Barry Guiney / Donnacha O’Callaghan (4Impacts and Munster Rugby)

January 29 ^th : Cloud Computing – changing the game in the Energy Industry

Speaker: to be announced

February 26 ^th : “Opening your mind to Open Data”

Speaker: Dominic Byrne, Open Data Ireland

March 26 ^th : “Shelf Analytics -Using data analytics to identify purchasing trends in the retail/consumer goods industry”.

Speaker : Liam English (Bluemetrix)

IC4 Cloud Clinics

December 4 ^th , DCU Business School

Register at: http://www.ic4.ie/event/cloud-on-boarding-clinic-dcu-6/

IC4 is pleased to announce the continuation of its ‘cloud on-boarding’ clinics to help companies leverage the benefits of using cloud computing in their businesses. This cloud clinic takes the form of ‘one-on-one’ sessions with a Cloud Expert who is available to both advise companies on a cloud strategy for their business as well as to provide direct ‘hands on’ help in on-boarding applications to the cloud.

IC4 has recently completed a four month trial of a weekly Cloud Clinic, whose goal was to help start-up companies understand the benefit of using cloud computing in their businesses, either in helping them to deliver their own software application or to consume third party applications delivered over the cloud.

Over forty companies attended these one-on-one clinics and the feedback from participants has been so positive that IC4 is now planning to start these weekly clinics again in the autumn.

“Whenever you go to something advertised as a “free clinic” you’re always a bit uncertain whether it is a covert sales operation, or fearing of being dragged into something you really don’t feel ready to accept yet” says Rogerio Chumbinho, Senior Project Manager at SmartBay Ireland . “That is absolutely NOT the case with IC4′s cloud clinics. I attended two one hour, one-on-one sessions on behalf of SmartBay Ireland, Ltd. with the purpose of assessing how cloud services could help in our IT and data management; both sessions were very informative and very well targeted, led by a professional that very quickly understood my basic level of knowledge on the subject and adapted to it. All this for free, no strings attached! No forms to fill out, no pre-commitment to anything, no vendors calling you the next week! I highly recommend IC4′s cloud clinics whether you’re considering moving some or all of your IT services to the cloud, or just want to know a bit more about the concept. ”

“As a start up company in the technology space and being a non-technical person myself, I found the cloud clinic extremely helpful” says Una Mcneill, CEO of RoamPA Ltd . “ Brian reviewed our prototype application and cloud service concept and offered advice in terms of cloud solutions as well as on data security and other strategies that we needed to put in place as a company. I would highly recommend the cloud clinic and believe this initiative will be key in supporting start up enterprises such as ours to succeed with our cloud business globally”

Cathy McGovern, CEO of Inspiration, came to the clinics looking for advice on how to use the cloud to make her company’s legacy data more accessible and more secure. She later commented; “We found the Cloud Clinic extremely useful from a number of respects; it helped us to document the current set-up, document the business requirements, identify risks within our current set-up and to clarify a way forward. For certain elements of the solution we will need a cloud solution and for others we are satisfied with a local system, with solid back-up arrangements. With conflicting recommendations even within our own internal team , it was extremely useful to get expert, external, independent advice. ”

If you would like to know more about IC4’s Cloud Clinics or would like to register your interest in attending a future cloud clinic, please email me at

Best Paper Finalist Award for IC4 Researchers

“IC4 is pleased to announce that its research paper “Secure Cloud Storage and Search Scheme for Mobile Devices”, authored by Abir Awad, Adrian Matthews and Brian Lee, received the Best Paper Award in the 17th IEEE Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference ( MELECON 2014 ), held on the 13-16 April 2014 in Beirut, Lebanon.

The paper considers the problem of how best to secure mobile-cloud storage services. The authors have designed and developed a novel and secure searchable encryption scheme for mobile devices. In the proposed algorithm, a content based index is constructed and a locality sensitive hashing is used to allow the user to securely store files in the cloud and then to selectively retrieve them by performing a secure query and a fuzzy search. Moreover, the scheme allows the results to be ranked while both maintaining the privacy and confidentiality of the user as well as saving storage space and computation resources of his mobile phone. To quantify the performance of the proposed scheme, a range of tests are performed and the experimental results achieved demonstrate that the proposed system is suitable for a secure, fast and searchable storage mobile-cloud system.

For more information, please click on the following .

IRDG to host Research Seminar

IC4 Research Publication, IEEE’s most Downloaded Document

and is the 77th most popular overall download from the IEEE-Xplore Digital Library

IC4 is pleased to announce that it’s research paper “Cloud Migration Research: A Systematic Review”, authored by Pooyan Jamshidi, Aakash Ahmad and Claus Pahl, and published in the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, was the most downloaded document from this publication in February, 2014.

Pooyan Jamshidi is a PhD candidate in the School of Computing, Faculty of Engineering and Computing at Dublin City University (DCU) and a Research Assistant at the Irish Centre for Cloud Computing & Commerce (IC4). He is a member of the Software and Systems Engineering Group and his advisor is Dr. Claus Pahl. Pooyan’s general research interests are in the field of software engineering and his focus lies predominantly in the areas of cloud computing, software architecture, architecture-centric software evolution and self-adaptive software.

Please join me in congratulating Pooyan on this great achievement.

Tony McEnroe

IC4 Centre Director

IC4 Cloud Clinics proving popular with the SME community

IC4’s weekly Cloud Clinic, where companies can book a one-hour session with a cloud computing expert to discuss issues they have with developing or consuming cloud services, is proving very popular with the SME community. The Cloud Clinic is held every Thursday and rotates between DCU, UCC and AIT.

The Cloud Clinic helps companies who believe they can benefit from using cloud computing in their businesses, but who are experiencing difficulties either in architecting or implementing an appropriate cloud solution. The consulting process is broken down into four well-defined steps, which help companies to understand the level of effort and resources required to implement a cloud solution. These are:

i) Understanding the existing software setup

ii) Architecting an equivalent cloud-based solution

iii) Defining a process to move to the cloud

iv) Implementing the defined process to move to the cloud

Feedback from companies who have attended the Cloud Clinic has been very positive and IC4 looks forward to helping more companies, big or small, leverage the power of the cloud.

November’s ‘Last Thursday Seminar’ topic – ‘Disruptive Innovations in the Health Care Sector’ – presented by Dr. Johnny Walker, fills the room at Edelman.

Edelman Offices, St Stephens Green, Dublin, November 28 ^th , 2013 : Dr Johnny Walker, a medical entrepreneur and clinically active Radiologist and Nuclear Physician, was IC4’s guest speaker at this month’s ‘Last Thursday Seminar’.

Johnny presented his views and vision on how technology is proving a major disruptive force in the health care sector and how technology can be used to deliver a better, more cost effective, health care service.

Johnny delivered a unique, knowledgeable, passionate and humorous insight into the benefits of a patient-centric health care system and the role the ‘Jinga’ (the alpha female in a group or family – usually the mother) can play in simultaneously improving the health care service and reducing its cost of delivery. As one attendee put it at the end of the session; “as usual, Johnny delivers a master class in how to be compelling!”.

Dr. Johnny Walker Biography:

Johnny has founded and built a number of technology companies whose focus have been to employ the latest technological advances in delivering health care to patients in their home environment. In 1995 he founded “Imaging The South Group” to provide mobile ultrasonic scans to aboriginal communities living in remote parts of Western Australia. In 2001 he founded “Global Diagnostics” in the UK, focussing on providing tele-diagnostics to the NHS and private health clinics. This business later merged with Centric Health in Ireland and now employs over 450 people internationally. Johnny recently co-founded “Health Founders” in Dublin with the goal of leveraging health informatics to create compelling, personalised, digital and mobile solutions for the healthcare ecosystem, allowing individuals to take ownership of their own well-being.

Johnny is currently the Director of Diagnostic Imaging at The Hermitage Medical Clinic. He is a member of the Medical Advisory Committee where he Chairs the multi-disciplinary team meeting programs in Oncology, Musculoskeletal, Respiratory, Colorectal, Urology and Neurology.

Tony McEnroe

IC ⁴ Centre Director

A strong lineup of guest speakers attracts attendees from a broad spectrum of the development and end user communities.

Marketing Lab., Dublin City University, November 14 ^th , 2013 : Inviting a strong lineup of Openstack industry developers to present at this IC ⁴ ’s workshop proved to be an effective way of educating members on the pros and cons of the Openstack cloud operating system.

Speakers from Intel, Dell, MPSTOR and UCC described their experiences in developing applications, features and standards for the Openstack community.

The presentations were followed by an interactive discussion on how IC ⁴ could help Irish companies either developing cloud applications to run on Openstack or seeking to consume cloud services, running on Openstack platforms. It was broadly agreed that IC ⁴ could play a valuable role in helping building trust in the Openstack cloud by demonstrating and validating the performance of applications and business processes. It was also agreed that IC ⁴ could play a valuable role in helping to promote the benefits of open standards.

IC ⁴ would like to thank Thijs Metsch and John Kennedy from Intel, Keith Tobin from Dell, William Oppermann from MPSTOR and Stefan Meyer from UCC for their very interesting and practical presentations.

Tony McEnroe

IC ⁴ Centre Director

IC4 Chairman, Dr Sean Baker, wins Irish Software Association’s “Person of the Year Award”

Dr. Sean Baker, in recognition for his contribution to the Irish software industry, is the recipient of the Irish Software Association’s ‘Person of the Year’ for 2013.

Sean receiving award from ISA Chair, Edel Creely

IC ⁴ is proud to announce that the Chairman of its Steering Board, Dr. Sean Baker, has been named as the ISA’s ‘Person of the Year’ for 2013. Sean has been a very active member of Ireland’s software community from the time he co-founded IONA Technologies Ltd. in March, 1991.

In addition to Chairing IC ⁴ ’s Steering Board, Sean is also the Chairman of the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC) and sits on the Governance Committee of LERO, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). He is also the Chairman at Incaplex (formerly 3Strata), a Director of Calom Technologies and an Adjunct Professor at UCD.

Sean is an ex-Chairman of the Irish Software Association (2009-11) and has previously been a Member of the Advisory Science Council (from 2008-13) and a Director of Gridstore (2009-12). Sean was the co-founder of IONA Technologies and held the position of Director, CTO and Chief Scientist at IONA for seventeen years.

The IC ⁴ Research Team and Industry Members would like to congratulate Sean on his award.

First Edelman ‘Last Thursday’ Breakfast Seminar is a Great Success

and proves to be an ideal way for Senior Executives to network with their peers over breakfast, while catching up on how Cloud Computing and Digital Marketing can benefit their businesses, and still be at their desks by 09.30am!

Edelman Offices, St Stephens Green, Dublin, October 31 ^st , 2013 : The first, of what IC ⁴ plans will be a regular, ‘last Thursday in the month’ Breakfast Seminar, was filled to capacity to listen to very engaging presentations from Dr. Theo Lynn (IC ⁴ ) and Darragh Rea (Edelman).

The seminar’s topic: “Influence Marketing in a Digital World” was appropriate given the overlap with the Dublin Web Summit and many of the attendees intended to make their way to the Web Summit after enjoying breakfast, complements of Edelman.

Darragh Rea talked about how the ‘top-down’ approach of traditional PR methods complemented the ‘bottom-up’ approach of social media to provide a dynamic ‘diamond of influence’ that dealt with customer concerns as they occurred.

Theo Lynn talked about the important role ‘Influencers’ play in PR today through amplifying the PR message. He explained the essential characteristics of an Influencer and how their effectiveness can be objectively measured.

The seminar attendees took away a very clear understanding of the fast growing importance of social media in influencing people to purchase products and services and of the need for businesses to have a social media strategy. In the words of web strategist, Jordan Raynor:

“It has never been easier to be as influential as you can be today. Information is cheap, easier to produce and, if you have a quality message, it’s never been cheaper to get it out there.”

Tony McEnroe, IC ⁴ Centre Director

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Author Archives: admin

Workshops

October 15 th : “Cloud Computing – Increasing IT Effectiveness in Delivering Business Services”

Edelman Breakfast Seminars

IC4 Cloud Clinics

October 15 ^th : “Cloud Computing – Increasing IT Effectiveness in Delivering Business Services”