Message from WOSD 2012 Workshop Chair

Summary form only given, as follows. Recent systems are increasing in complexity, spread, and scale in order to meet the diverse needs of service providers and users. These systems are continuously being used for a long period of time, while constantly being modified to meet the changes in service objectives, users' needs, technologies, standards/regulations, and so forth. These systems are often connected via networks to utilize services provided by other systems. As our daily lives depend more on such systems, the importance of systems dependability is increasing. In the development of software so far, we took the static view that a system stays the same and isolated from other systems. A question arises whether we can take the same view to recent and future systems. One may think that the life of a system can be viewed as a temporal and spatial concatenation of static and isolated systems. However, it is getting to be more difficult to separate the phases when the system is static and a system is being modified due to its scale, spread, and complexity. We may need a new view to make systems dependable. A system whose function, structure, and boundary keep changing over time is called an open system in contrast to a closed system whose function, structure, and boundary stay the same through the life of the system. Recent systems do and future systems will hold the characteristics of open systems. We tentatively define Open Systems Dependability as the ability to continuously prevent the factors of failure, to take appropriate and quick action when failures occur to minimize the damage, to safely and continuously provide the services expected by users as much as possible, and to maintain accountability for the system operations and processes. This definition gives a practical view to achieving dependability of systems, putting emphasis on service continuity and accountability. Discussions are welcomed on whether such a definition is appropriate and effective and how we establish new concepts, processes, architectures, and tools that attain dependability throughout the lifecycle of an open system.