IEEE International Conference on Cloud Networking

Beyond 5G (B5G) applications and services offer unprecedented opportunities for innovation and progress. Nonetheless, achieving such a vision requires a new breed of intelligent mechanisms, protocols and autonomous architectures capable of truly taking advantage of the entire edge-to-cloud computing spectrum.

In particular, cross-domain scenarios, which include multi-cloud and multi-provider, are mostly comprised of heterogeneous technological domains requiring intelligent, efficient and close coordination among all the parts. Such a federated and collaborative view has been set as the path forward for unlocking the required automation and flexibility and achieving the extreme requirements and constraints of such next generation of applications. In that sense, this workshop intends to cover four key strands:

• Cross-domain edge-to-cloud continuum management: This strand focuses on architectures, mechanisms, protocols, and automated approaches for having and coordinating closed loops across multi-domain scenarios. This includes zero-touch-like strategies for dealing with a heterogeneous edge-to-cloud continuum across multiple domains. This also includes supporting tools for composing and coordinating closed loops spanning several domains.
• Cloud continuum for B5G services, applications, and enablers: This strand focuses on the various services, applications, and enablers allowing the realization of the various Beyond 5G (B5G) applications and services, including complex Internet of Things (IoT) verticals, Mixed Reality, Extended Reality (XR) collaborative applications, next generation of holographic applications, and tactile Internet scenarios. This strand covers B5G services and applications experiments, pilots and evaluation of novel mechanisms and approaches for enabling such scenarios over the cloud continuum.
• AI nativeness in cloud-continuum: This strand focuses on the network and service intelligence. Intelligence can be introduced in network elements or by interacting across network elements. Alternatively, intelligence can be achieved via a dedicated intelligence plane that would deal with selecting AI/ML algorithms and the associated AI/ML life cycle management, e.g., inference and training. Intelligence can be also applied in deciding and orchestrating how to manage, configure and coordinate AI/ML in different parts of the network. This includes formal methods for creating, selecting and applying closed-loops to achieve automation and assist the network management and control in planning, deployment and optimization phases.
• Privacy, security, and trust in cross-domain cloud continuum: This strand focuses on specific privacy, security, and trust challenges, such as cutting-edge proposals and solutions for ensuring privacy, security, and trust targeting cross-domain B5G scenarios running on cloud continuum. This includes formal methods for attesting and establishing trust liaisons in cross-domain scenarios, and novel AI-powered mechanisms for timely responding and addressing incidents such as cyber-attacks or privacy violations in these cloud-continuum scenarios.

The proposed workshop topics specifically target cutting-edge and novel approaches for dealing with the emerging challenges of B5G Services and applications spanning multiple-domain cloud continuum and the intrinsical need to abstract and manage the underlying infrastructure to make those scenarios viable. This is a less explored topic of the leading conference. This workshop will be a platform to discuss the latest advancements in cloud-continuum B5G services and cross-domain computing management.

Our community member aerOS project co-organises a workshop entitled “The Workshop on Intelligent Cloud Continuum for B5G Services.”