Cloud-Based Collaborative Technologies in IoT Age

As cloud enablement is one of the leading trends in contemporary computing, the multilayer distributed systems leveraging clouds became both more complex and mature. To leverage cloud, the software frequently needs to be re-designed and re-built either as cloud-native or at least cloud-washed, in accordance with varying cloud service paradigms. Although exploitation of cloud resources promises benefits, such as computing elasticity, zero provisioning and improved availability, migration towards cloud-enabled architecture introduces many challenges, related, e.g., to resource allocation in multilayer cloud model and quality of services. In order not to build the systems from scratch, generic or dedicated PaaS or SaaS clouds are typically used. The choice of a platform is not obvious, because it needs to address both the functional and non-functional specifics of a particular system.

Computer-assisted collaboration platforms, which provide services for interactive remote collaboration, come with very high expectations regarding quality of services. Therefore, they present many challenges to their developers, both because of the requirements and due to their complex, multi-layer architecture. Until recently, these platforms were not using cloud services. Nowadays, they evolve towards leveraging clouds, and are partly or completely re-designed and re-built accordingly.
Meanwhile, technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT) family emerge and are gaining much attention both in terms of research and development. The complexity of the IoT systems, including e.g., smart city platforms or IoT-enabled collaboration, and the requirements towards quality awareness of the services, may even exceed appropriate characteristics of contemporary platforms. Given the diversity of the devices and technologies, and the variety of services they offer, it is interesting both from scientific and industrial points of view to investigate the synergy effects of IoT, cloud, and collaboration technologies, as well as the foreseen challenges and the ways to overcome them. Therefore, the purpose of the track is to organize a forum for scientists and engineers to exchange ideas, regarding both existing and forthcoming technologies, in the IoT age.