Much of what we know about dependable computing is small-system centric, using models and assumptions that reflect this in many ways. With the rapid shift towards cloud computing platforms, we’re suddenly in the business of building systems that will be deployed onto tens of thousands of nodes. The cloud creates a new world in which amounts of data can be huge, objects can be huge, and applications must tolerate elasticity events, long scheduling delays, and geographically large deployments. Do traditional notions of assurance make sense at scale? This talk will discuss the new Isis2 platform, which aims at cloud-scale applications and supports novel big-data features that leverage strong consistency models in completely new ways.

Bio: Ken Birman is the N. Rama Rao Professor of Computer Science at Cornell. An ACM Fellow and the winner of the IEEE Tsutomu Kanai award, Ken has written 3 textbooks and published more than 150 papers in prestigious journals and conferences. Software he developed operated the New York Stock Exchange for more than a decade without trading disruptions, and played central roles in the French Air Traffic Control System (now expanding into much of Europe) and the US Navy AEGIS warship. Other technologies from his group found their way into IBM’s Websphere product, Amazon’s EC2 and S3 systems, Microsoft’s cluster management solutions. His latest system, Isis2 helps developers create secure, strongly consistent and scalable cloud computing solutions.