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Architecting for Continuous Delivery and Deployment

Continuous Software Engineering has been gaining signifiant momentum in terms of widespread adoption among large and small Software houses. This paradigm shift is based on the promise of early, frequent delivery and deployment of software features and continuous feedback on the usefulness and adoption of the features. One of the key challenging area of practice for continuous software engineering is architecting – Software development teams are expected to adopt new conceptualisation and designing approaches and design decision making processes – for example, moving from monolithic to micro services. Given the significant challenges of architectural issues in DevOps, it is important to build and share evidence-based body of knowledge about practices and processes for architectural support in Continuous Software Engineering. We have undertaken a significant research program on this topic and one of our comprehensive pieces of of work has just been accepted in a premier Software Engineering journal with the title of, An Empirical Study of Architecting for Continuous Delivery and Deployment, following is the abstract copied from the paper for the readers of this blog. The paper’s pre-print copies will be available soon. Read More »Architecting for Continuous Delivery and Deployment

Our New Work on Self-Adaptive Security for large-scale Open Environments

We are continuously progressing on the plan for strengthening our capabilities in Cyber Security. To achieve this goal, we have been not only building internal capabilities but also forming and leveraging strategic collaborations. Out of one of our recent collaborations, with Giannis and Rami, in the areas of Cyber Security has resulted a high quality piece of work that has been accepted in a highly profile journal, ACM Computing Survey. The abstract of this paper is below and can provide some useful insights to the potential readers of this work. We are hoping that this piece of work will lead to systematic classification and comparison of architectural level Cyber Security Solutions and develop and evaluate new techniques, approaches, and tools for designing and evaluating security centric large scale distributed systems. Below is the abstract from the paper.Read More »Our New Work on Self-Adaptive Security for large-scale Open Environments

Modeling Security-Sensitive Architecture of Systems-of-Systems

An increasing number of software systems are considered Software Intensive Systems of Systems (SiSoS), which consist of dozens of constituent systems. Systems are interconnected using private or public networks, which can be prime target for security attacks. Hence, securing SiSoS is a huge challenge and an emerging areas of research and development. SoS can have several applications domains that can range from smart cities, to defence systems, and industrial control systems. Modeling of and reasoning of security-sensitive architecture of software intensive systems is a challenging piece of work but several modelling approaches and tooling support have been developed. However, there has been no signifiant effort to develop appropriate modelling approach and associated infrastructure for modeling security-senstive architecture of SoS. Led by our collaboratives in France, we have recently developed an approach and tool support for supporting seccutiry-senstive architecture design and analysis .Read More »Modeling Security-Sensitive Architecture of Systems-of-Systems

Security and Privacy Challenges of Interconnected Systems

People and organisations are becoming heavily reliant on hyper-connected, hyper-virtulised, and hyper-mobile systems. Such systems are also called blended systems, where  millions (or even billions) or devices, software, people, and physical objectives (so-called everything) are connected with each other through private or public (Internet) – so-called Internet of Everything. Security and privacy are the key concerns in such systems, which are considered prime target for cyber attacks. Researchers and practitioners are allocated enormous amounts of resources to understanding the security and privacy challenges of such systems and devising and evaluating appropriate solutions. We are privileged to have Professor Awais Rashid, director Security Lancaster UK, to share his observations and insights on the topic of security and privacy challenges in blended systems when delivers a keynote at the Australasian Software Engineering Conference in a few days. The title and abstract of Professor Rashid’s keynote are: Read More »Security and Privacy Challenges of Interconnected Systems

Leveraging Activity Based Computing and Cloud Computing for Global Software Engineering

We have been working on exploring the use of activity based computing for guiding the design and development of next generation of tools for supporting software engineering in general and global software engineering in particular. At the same time, we have started work on leveraging cloud computing for the provision of such platforms and tools as a service. Recently, I gave two talks on this topic when I visited PNNL, Richland, Washington State, USA and Software Engineering Centre at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. The slides of the talks are here: ActivityTheory-CloudComputing-GSE-pdf. The details on this work can be found in the papers that Paolo Tell, Aufeef Chauhan, and I have written. ABC4GSD is driven through Paolo Tell’s PhD research and Tool as a Service (TaaS) work is being carried out through Aufeef Chauhan’s PhD work. The abstract of my talk is here:Read More »Leveraging Activity Based Computing and Cloud Computing for Global Software Engineering

Architecting for Clouds-enabled Software Systems

Our research team at ITU ended the busy month of August with hosting a very interesting 2 days cloud compputing workshop, which was designed to initiate a collaborative network of researchers from Nordic region, China, Japan, and Brazil in order to draw synergies among their expertise and knowledge to investigate the challenges of developing and evolving Cloud-aware software systems from software architecture perspective. The workshop was attended by more than 20 people who came together to present their most recent work related to cloud computing technologies and how it can be leveraged for developing a common research agenda for addressing some of the key challenges of providing architectural level support for designing and evolving cloud computing based software intensive systems and software. That was why the event was named “ArchClouds: Architecting Cloud-enabled Software Systems”. Read More »Architecting for Clouds-enabled Software Systems

NxGT for GSD

Organizations are increasingly adopting geographically distributed development models, which are commonly known as Global Software Development or Global Software Engineering (GSE). There are many forms of GSD such as outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring, software ecosystems, distributed development centres, and strategic alliances and partnerships for developing software at different places. GSD is not any more a phenomenon rather an increasing trend. Hence, there should not be any debate whether or not software development enterprizes (in-house and software houses) will develop software through global distributed development centres and teams; rather the question is to what extent. While GSD promises many advantages and benefits, however, GSD projects are also more likely to be unsuccessful, because geographical, temporal, cultural, organizational, and stakeholder distances can have negative impact on communication, coordination, collaboration, and knowledge exchange. Software researchers and practitioners have developed several tools and devised numerous processes and practices to support geographically distributed software development. However, the increasing scale and complexities of GSD projects are making them inappropriate and insufficient. Hence, there is a vital need of new tools and processes, which we call next generation technological infrastructure for supporting GSD. In order to meet this need, we are defining a large scale multi-disciplinary project involving several academic researchers and industrial partners. Read More »NxGT for GSD

Profes 2010 – Authors notified

It is a great sense of satisfaction that we were able to complete the review process for Profes 2010 in a record time despite we also had several email based discussions on conflicting reviews. Many of the reviewers actively were actively involved in the discussions and selection process. We are greatly thankful to the program committee for not only seeking almost double the number of submissions to this year’s Profes but also providing detailed and timely reviews – the volunteering spirit for the community service was commendable.

The other program Co-Chair, Matias and I carefully considered each of the reviews on the submitted papers and had useful discussions with Markku (GC) about the last year’s submissions and acceptance rate and this year’s submissions and reviews. Our selection decisions were influenced by the thoughts of all involved that Profes should enter to the second decade of its life with being more high quality conference despite we were aware of the vital need of attracting participants. We decided that we would try our best to attract more participants to Profes 2010 without lowering the quality of the program.
Read More »Profes 2010 – Authors notified