Towards an Operating System for Intercloud

Cyber physical systems, such as intelligent dikes and smart energy systems, require scalable and flexible computing infrastructures to process data from instruments and sensor networks. Infrastructure as a Service clouds provide a flexible way to allocate remote distributed resources, but lack mechanisms to dynamically configure software (dependencies) and manage application execution. This paper describes the design and implementation of the Intercloud Operating System (ICOS), which acts between applications and distributed clouds, i.e., the Intercloud. ICOS schedules, configures, and executes applications in the Intercloud while taking data dependencies, budgets, and deadlines into account. Based on our experiences with the prototype, we present considerations and additional research challenges. The research on ICOS clarifies essential concepts needed to realize a flexible and scalable on-demand execution platform for distributed applications over distributed cloud providers.