Establishing a "Joint Research & Education Agenda" in the field of cloud computing

Zurich, Switzerland: February 8, 2013 - CloudSigma, an international, customer-centric, pure-cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider based in Zurich, today announced the launch of a joint effort between the ICCLab, at the Zurich University of Applied Science (ZHAW), and CloudSigma establishing a "Joint Research & Education Agenda" in the field of cloud computing.

Cloud Computing is transforming the IT industry. It keeps constantly expanding and has grown up to a level which requires matching scientific initiatives and educational offers. That is why the ICCLab, at the Zurich University of Applied Science (ZHAW), and CloudSigma have united their efforts, experience, and expertise to produce a "Joint Research & Education Agenda". The ICCLab is an established thought leader within many Cloud Computing research and innovation communities. CloudSigma, on the other hand perceives constant innovation and improved services as a founding principle on which it has built its business model.

The "Joint Research & Education Agenda" initiative between CloudSigma and the ICCLab is one of few of its kind in Switzerland where an academic institution with the right focus and strategy is engaging with one of the world's leading cloud infrastructure service providers.

The joint initiative between CloudSigma and the ICCLab is to deliver four basic goals enumerated here:

• To foster public uptake of our innovations by a wider ecosystem.

The "eco-system" is a network of institutions, communities, and people surrounding CloudSigma, ZHAW and the ICCLab, including in particular the European Union's Framework Programme Research, Future Internet Public-Private Partnership activities and Swiss Cloud Computing stakeholders.

• To generate strategic Intellectual Property (IPR)

The generation of strategic Intellectual Property (IPR) is defined as the process of development of technologies which are important for both CloudSigma and ZHAW/ICCLab based upon common and shared strategic research themes.

• To transfer results beyond research and open source projects into the commercial market

The eventual transfer of results is a top priority objective. It is to be achieved either internally via bilateral funding agreements or using external tools such as, for instance, the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation.

• To gear the educational mission by transfer critical know-how to future generations of engineers.

Finally the initiative aims at delivering valuable knowledge to Bachelor and Masters students at ZHAW, and cloud computing stakeholders by transferring critical know-how by various, tailor-made educational measures.

The association between ZHAW (ICCLab) and CloudSigma will also bring benefits to CloudSigma customers. As a result of joint research and innovation, CloudSigma customers will be offered new and/or improved cloud services that will either help in creating richer and more valuable applications and/or facilitate reducing the costs of existing service offered by CloudSigma.

Generally, the "Joint Research & Education Agenda" is expected to help in eliminating many technology barriers by setting clear strategic research themes, on one side, and understanding the needs of cloud providers on the other. From this perspective the initiative will aim at eliminating topics such as the lack of interoperability in clouds today, the lack of dependable cloud services and the absence of reliable cloud performance.

About CloudSigma
CloudSigma is a pure-cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider that offers highly-available, flexible, enterprise-class cloud servers and cloud hosting solutions, both in Europe and the U.S. CloudSigma is the most customizable cloud provider on the market, giving customers full control over their cloud and eliminating restrictions on how users deploy their computing resources. With CloudSigma, customers can provision processing, storage, networks and other fundamental computing resources as they please, as well as easily deploy any operating system or application with full root/administrative access. The result is the highest-performing cloud at the most efficient price possible.

With infrastructure in Interxion's European Cloud Hubs and SwitchNap's Las Vegas data center campus, CloudSigma selects the highest-quality facilities to support its innovative infrastructure. CloudSigma is increasingly being recognized for its advancement of the cloud IaaS industry and was chosen as one of Europe's top 25 cloud companies in 2010. For more information, please visit www.CloudSigma.com or visit the company on Twitter @CloudSigma, Facebook and Google+.

Press Contacts
CloudSigma
Meredith L. Eaton
March Communications
617-960-9877
cloudsigma@marchpr.com

About the ICCLab
The ICCLab is part of the Institute for Information Technology (InIT) at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) in Switzerland. With just under 9000 students, 26 bachelor degree programs and 10 consecutive Master's programs, ZHAW is one of the largest multidisciplinary universities of applied sciences in Switzerland. ZHAW maintains 20 institutes and 30 centres, which jointly provide customised educational and research services to the public and private sector. Based on that foundation, ZHAW is inherently committed to the commercial exploitation by means and support for creation of high-tech spin-offs.

The research of the ICCLab is exclusively dedicated to the domain of cloud computing, covering the entire technology stack from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), over Platform as a Service (PaaS), to Software as a Service (SaaS). The research and exploitation is based on a comprehensive and holistic approach to science and innovation, based on three driving principles, namely Scientific Foundation, Strategic Impact and Knowledge Transfer.

ZHAW/ ICCLab Contacts
Thomas M. Bohnert
Head of ICCLab
www.cloudcomp.ch
www.engineering.zhaw.ch