Advancing Fault Injection and Dependability Evaluation in the Software-Driven Telecom Industry

Achieving dependable software is a challenging problem, especially for industries beyond traditional safety-critical domains, such as telecommunications, consumer electronics, manufacturing, etc., where the cost of software failures is still quite high. Several factors contribute to exacerbate this problem: these industries are abruptly converting into software-driven ones; they must face time-to-market goals stricter than ever; and software-related regulations and standards in these domains still need to become mature. For these reasons, industry is in need for lean and affordable solutions (processes and technologies) to improve the dependability of software products. This opens to many opportunities for software dependability research that are both intellectually challenging and impactful for industry. In this talk, I will present my experience in R&D projects with Critiware s.r.l., an Italian start-up and former spin-off of the Federico II university, together with customers that are addressing new software dependability challenges. Part of this experience matured in the context of a broad research cooperation with Huawei Technologies, which has been aimed at applying the approaches from the dependable computing discipline (such as software fault injection and fault tolerance, software reliability and stress testing, and failure data analysis) in two key areas: the dependability of the "cloud telecom" and of mobile computing. The presentation focuses on the lessons learned and suggestions for establishing a fruitful cooperation between academics and professionals in the field dependable computing.