HotCloud '19 Call for Papers

The 11th USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing (HotCloud '19) will take place on July 8, 2019, and will be co-located with the 2019 USENIX Annual Technical Conference.

Sponsored by USENIX, the Advanced Computing Systems Association.

Important Dates

  • Submissions due: Wednesday, March 6, 2019, 8:59 pm PDT Tuesday, March 12, 2019, 8:59 pm PDT—deadline extended!
  • Notification to authors: Wednesday, April 17, 2019
  • Final papers due: Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Workshop Organizers

Program Co-Chairs

Christina Delimitrou, Cornell University
Dan R. K. Ports, Microsoft Research

Program Committee

Hitesh Ballani, Microsoft
Orna Ben-Yehuda, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology
Theo Benson, Duke University
Irina Calciu, VMware
Lydia Chen, IBM
Chen Ding, University of Rochester
Pedro Fonseca, Purdue University
Rodrigo Fonseca, Brown University
K. Gopinath, Indian Institute of Science
Puru Kulkarni, IIT Bombay
Heiner Litz, University of California, Santa Cruz
David Lo, Google
Jacob Nelson, Microsoft Research
Pradeep Padala, Cisco
Nohhyun Park, Rubrik
Vijay Reddi, Harvard University and Google
Yasushi Saito, GRAIL, Inc.
Ryan Stutsman, University of Utah
Jun Suzuki, NEC Corporation
Michael Swift, University of Wisconsin—Madison
Diman Tootaghaj, HP Labs
John Wilkes, Google
Bernard Wong, University of Waterloo
Neeraja Yadwadkar, Stanford University

Steering Committee

Irfan Ahmad, CachePhysics
Dilma Da Silva, Texas A&M University
Eyal de Lara, University of Toronto
Casey Henderson, USENIX Association
Swaminathan Sundararaman, Pyxeda AI
Hakim Weatherspoon, Cornell University

Overview

HotCloud brings together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry working on cloud computing technologies to share their perspectives, report on recent developments, discuss research in progress, and identify new/emerging "hot" trends in this important area. While cloud computing has gained traction over the past few years, many challenges remain in the design, implementation, and deployment of cloud computing.

HotCloud is open to examining all models of cloud computing, including the scalable management of in-house servers, remotely hosted Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), infrastructure augmented with tools and services that provide Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

We solicit original papers on a wide range of cloud computing topics for HotCloud. We particularly encourage the submission of position papers that describe novel research directions and work that is in its formative stages. Interesting issues show up at all levels of the software stack, but HotCloud's emphasis is on combining mechanisms to build working clouds rather than on implementing new low-level mechanisms themselves. For example, papers on using virtual machines in new ways would be preferred over papers on improving core VM technology.

The HotCloud program committee is placing a strong emphasis on encouraging early-stage ideas. As a workshop, our key role is to provide a place where novel ideas at their nascent stages can see the light of day long before they are ready for publication at the various "conferences of record." Hence, we will be looking for papers that generate discussion and debate. A good way to think about this is that if you are only a few months away from submitting to SOCC, VLDB, OSDI, SOSP, FAST, etc., you are probably already past the sweet spot for HotCloud.

Topics

Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

  • Improving elasticity and availability in cloud infrastructure and cloud services
  • Cloud support for new hardware technologies (e.g. accelerators and GPUs)
  • Cloud data management and analytics
  • Multi-tenancy and related issues such as performance isolation
  • Micro-cloud (or Cloudlet) infrastructure
  • Charging models and economics
  • Power-efficient ("green") computing for clouds
  • Monitoring, troubleshooting, and failure recovery
  • Debugging and performance analysis of cloud applications
  • Cloud management and configuration
  • Virtual appliance management and composition
  • Storage architectures for cloud computing
  • Novel networking approaches for cloud computing
  • Programming models
  • Security and privacy in clouds
  • New applications for clouds
  • Mobility
  • Integrating enterprise applications with the cloud
  • Cloud operations
  • Cloud workload management including migration to disparate clouds

Submission Instructions

Please submit your papers (no extended abstracts) in PDF format via the web form. Do not email submissions.

The complete submission must be no longer than five (5) pages not including references and discussion topic section (see below). It should be typeset in two-column format in 10-point type on 12-point (single-spaced) leading, with the text block being no more than 7" wide by 9" deep. Submissions that violate any of these restrictions may not be reviewed. The limits will be interpreted fairly strictly, and no extensions will be given for reformatting. If you wish, you may use this LaTeX template and style file.

There are no formal restrictions on the use of color in graphs or charts, but please use them sparingly—not everybody has access to a color printer.

The names of authors and their affiliations should be included on the first page of the submission.

In keeping with the workshop format described above, authors of each full paper are required to add a short section, immediately before references that explicitly calls out the kind of feedback you are looking to receive, the controversial points of the paper, the type of discussion this paper is likely to generate in a workshop format, the open issues the paper does not address, and under what circumstances the whole idea might fall apart.

Simultaneous submission of the same work to multiple venues, submission of previously published work, or plagiarism constitutes dishonesty or fraud. USENIX, like other scientific and technical conferences and journals, prohibits these practices and may take action against authors who have committed them. See the USENIX Conference Submissions Policy for details. Papers accompanied by nondisclosure agreement forms will not be considered. If you are uncertain whether your submission meets USENIX's guidelines, please contact the program co-chairs, hotcloud19chairs@usenix.org, or the USENIX office, submissionspolicy@usenix.org.

Reviewing of papers will be done by the program committee, potentially assisted by outside referees in limited cases. Accepted papers may be shepherded through an editorial review process by a member of the program committee. All papers will be available online to registered attendees before the workshop. If your accepted paper should not be published prior to the event, please notify production@usenix.org. The papers will be available online to everyone beginning on the day of the workshop. Accepted submissions will be treated as confidential prior to publication on the USENIX web site; rejected submissions will be permanently treated as confidential.

By submitting a paper, you agree that at least one of the authors will attend the workshop to present it. If the workshop registration will pose a hardship for the presenter of the accepted paper, please contact conference@usenix.org.