Megha, the Federated Cloud pilot running in Spain (2010 - 2013), and previous successful projects such as OSMOSE (Open Source Middleware for Open Systems in Europe 2003-2005), OSIRIS (Open Source Infrastructure fun Run-Time Integration of Services  2005-2008) and OSAmI-Commons (Open Source Ambient Intelligence Commons 2008-2011) have constituted excellent foundations for further steps. However, while software is becoming more open, more software will be needed. Managing the increasing amount of software requires new approaches beyond technical scalability issues.  Previous running initiatives and recent initiated projects are presented as well as their benefits in the development of an expanding digital universe.

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Scaling Software Challenges
Alvaro Simón
Carlos Fernández
Victor Mendez
CESGA
asimon@cesga.es
CESGA
carlosf@cesga.es
PIC
vmendez@pic.es
Jordi Guijarro
Jesús Bermejo
CESCA
jguijarro@cesca.cat
Telvent
jesus.bermejo@telvent.com
Abstract—Megha, the Federated Cloud pilot running in Spain (2010 - 2013), and previous successful projects such as OSMOSE (Open Source Middleware for
Open Systems in Europe 2003-2005), OSIRIS (Open Source Infrastructure fun Run-Time Integration of Services 2005-2008) and OSAmI-Commons (Open
Source Ambient Intelligence Commons 2008-2011) have constituted excellent foundations for further steps. However, while software is becoming more open,
more software will be needed. Managing the increasing amount of software requires new approaches beyond technical scalability issues. Previous running
initiatives and recent initiated projects are presented as well as their benefits in the development of an expanding digital universe.
Index Terms— Cloud Computing, Federated Cloud, Intercloud, Open Source, Scalability, Software Engineering
——————————  ——————————
1 INTRODUCTION
O
nly recently the explosion of the digital universe
has been recognized. Black Duck KnowledgeBase
[1] includes information from 800.000 projects in more
than 5.500 sites and 2.200 software licenses (GPL, LGPL,
Apache, etc). On the other hand, information in the
world is doubling every two years [2] and every day, 2.5
quintillion bytes of data are created. Over 90% of the
data in the world today has been created in the last three
years [3].
ous challenge.
3 OSMOSE, OSIRIS AND OSAMI-COMMONS PROJECTS
In the technical dimension a remarkable effort for
tackling scaling software challenges has been carried out
during the last years through several projects such as
OSMOSE (Open Source Middle­ware for Open Systems
in Europe, 2003­2005) [10], OSIRIS (Open Source Infra­
structure for Run­Time Integration of Services, 2005­
2008) [11] and OSAmI­Commons (Open Source Ambient
Intelligence Commons, 2008­2011) [12] . Open source
modular and dynamic middleware foundations, service
bus implementations, federated identity and reusability
frameworks have contributed importantly for reducing
development efforts demonstrating the benefits for social
relevant areas such as sustainability, health, smart
homes, city services and education. The links between
composite and virtualization cloud approaches have
been identified leading to the setting­up of MEGHA
Federated Cloud (2010) or Intercloud initiative (i.e. inter­
connected cloud of clouds vs. Internet as network of net­
works [13]).
The software is also growing dramatically out of the
traditional software sector. The ITEA [4] Report on Soft­
ware Intensive Systems (2005) [5] analyzed software
growth in six industrial sectors (automotive, aerospace,
medical equipment, telecom equipment and consumer
electronics) concluding that software is leading innova­
tion in all these market segments. In fact, currently, it is
difficult to identify a domain in which innovation does
not rely on software.
2 EXPLORING THE ECONOMIC RELEVANCE OF THE
SOFTWARE
Nicholas Negropote used the “Digital Economy” term
for referring to the shift from processing atoms to pro­
cessing bits [6]. The difference between bits and atoms is
fundamental to the consequences of living in a digital
world [7]. An OECD effort in understanding the eco­
nomic relevance of the software was initiated in 2007 [8].
Two conferences supported this OECD Software Innova­
tion Study; the first in Cáceres, Spain (November 2007),
and the second in Tokyo (October 2008). The study ad­
dressed innovation themes such as security, privacy, mo­
bility, interoperability, accessibility and reliability from a
user perspective [9]. It also raised the fact that identify­
ing the boundaries of the software industry is a continu­
4 MEGHA FEDERATED CLOUD
Research and academic communities face common
challenges not only for adapting their procedures to the
new computing paradigms, but also for contributing to
its development. MEGHA Working Group was originally
initiated to coordinate this within the scope of the insti­
tutions affiliated to RedIRIS [14] in Spain addressing
R&D, education and management aspects. From the be­
ginning MEGHA established direct links with initiatives
such as e­Science [15] and CRUE­TIC [16] in Spain and
internationally with projects in the research and
March 2013

2. 2
academia communities: TERENA [17] (TFMSP, TF­Stor­
age, TF­EMC2), OpenNebula Interoperability Working
Group [5], GÉANT [19], EGI [20] and OGF [21].
SUCRE CLOUDSOURCE MAGAZINE
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MEGHA authentication is based in x509 users and robot
certificates issued by Spanish pkIRISGrid CA. This new
feature was used by PIC developers to enhance DIRAC
software framework [25] originally developed by LHCb
[26] to manage computing operations on Grid Comput­
ing infrastructures. The new cloud plugin developed by
PIC and USC teams integrates a cloud broker, user au­
thentication and supports different cloud managers such
as OpenNebula or CloudStack [27]. Currently MEGHA
members are working to integrate Virtual Organizations
(VOs) or a dynamic set of users to share federated cloud
resources.
5 ADDRESSING SCALING SOFTWARE DIMENSIONS
Fig 1 Megha concept validation testbed
4.1 Concept validation
In the first phase (2010­2011) MEGHA validated feder­
ated cloud platforms using OCCI [22] to streamline the
use of cloud technologies among R&E service centers.
Representative infrastructure providers (CESCA,
CESGA, PIC), middle­ware providers: OpenNebula,
RedIRIS, OSAmI­Commons and users (UAB, UOC, UM)
together with Intermediate/Identity/brokers resources
(RedIRIS) joined efforts to demonstrate the viability of
the approach. The results stimulated the development on
use cases among users such as: E­learning platforms on
demand (Academic Services), Distributed HPC platform
(e­Science) and Virtual Labs (VDI) in a hybrid scenario
(Academic services).
4.2 On-going developments
The federation of clouds for the research and aca­
demic communities could be defined as an aggregation
of multiple Community Clouds. In this context, federa­
tion requirements must address new technical chal­
lenges:
• Federated user authentication and authorization
mechanisms and user management between dif­
ferent cloud managers
• Secure VM image distribution and validation
among heterogeneous cloud managers
• Federated Cloud accounting system integrating
the accounting records of multiple cloud man­
agers and supporting the Federated Cloud gov­
ernance
• Monitoring and notification of unpredictable
change of availability and readability status
MEGHA is currently working in different solutions to
solve these challenges. The new rOCCI [23] server and
OCCI [24] clients tested by CESGA and PIC teams with
OpenNebula 3.8.x are able to use x509 user certificates as
authentication method.
While the digital universe is exploding, information
technology staff is growing at a much lower rate. Master­
ing scaling software is not only related to software tech­
nologies rather it is a consequence of managing relevant
business models, organizations, methods, processes and
tools. For supporting this objective previous web and
SOA workshops (JSWEB) and the one targeting Business
Processes and Services Engineering (PNIS) joined in a
single event integrating Science and Engineering of Ser­
vices (JCIS) [28]. On the other hand, SCALARE project
(Scaling Software) [29] is being initiated among several
European partners for addressing scaling software chal­
lenges across its several dimensions.
6 CONCLUSION
The digital technologies are transforming our society
faster than ever while the increasing relevance of the
software in non­software markets, and in the society in
general, makes difficult to identify the boundaries of the
software industry. The efforts presented in the article are
only a few of many others tackling scaling software chal­
lenges (including those derived from the explosion of
available data).
Cloud federation has been validated as a suitable ap­
proach for building upon while more software needs are
leading to the technology staff becoming the future bot­
tleneck. Therefore, increasing software development effi­
ciency is needed to address future challenges as well as
further research to fully understand the implications of
merging two worlds with very different behavior rules.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank the partners contributing
to the mentioned projects: Aicia, Autonomous University
of Barcelona, Bantry technologies, Bull S.A.A., Cenatic,
Capricode, CARE Technologies, Carlos III University,
CESCA, CESGA, Corscience, Charles University in
Prague, Dortmund University, École polytechnique
fédérale de Lausanne EPFL, Electricité De France, Espo­
tel, Eteration, Fidetia, France Télécom, ICT­Norway, IN­

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RIA, Institut Télécom, Institut Polytechnique de Greno­
ble, Joseph Fourier Laboratory of Informatics of Greno­
ble, Laboratoire d'Informatique Fondamentale de Lille,
Laboratoire LSR, Lynx, Malaga University, Materna
GmbH, mFabrik Research Oy, OpenNebula Project,
Open University of Catalonia, Paderborn University, PIC,
Politechnic University of Valencia, Philips, Prodevelop,
Prosyst Software GmbH, RedIRIS, Rostock University,
Sampas, Seville University, Siemens, Schneider Electric,
Schüchtermann­Schiller'sche Kliniken, SRDC, Technical
University of Madrid (UPM), Telefónica I+D, Tecnalia,
Telvent, Thales, Vigo University, Vodafone, VTT Techni­
cal Research Centre of Finland, Whitestein Technologies
A.G., Wisur
The work in the mentioned projects was supported in
part by grants from the Ministries of Austria, Czech Re­
public, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Norway,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Tur­
key.
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