14th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC 2021)
December 6-9, 2021 - Leicester, UK - Call for Papers
Website: http://ucc-conference.org/

CALL FOR PAPERS

The digital transformation of all areas of life is accelerated in this decade
by novel cloud services, e-infrastructures, data platforms and cyber-physical
system integration. This broader scope of cloud computing calls for technically
sound contributions that combine scale with convenience and reliability.
Society and economy depend on cloud applications delivering compute power on
demand in every location along data paths as a general service to the public,
in analogy to conventional utilities. The engineering of such systems and
applications calls for scientifically proven approaches, methods, tools and
technologies.

Providing a forum to review and discuss possible solutions, UCC is the premier
IEEE/ACM conference for areas related to Cloud Computing as a Utility where
leading researchers and practitioners in this important and growing field
gather on an annual basis.

This will be the 14th UCC in a successful conference series of community-driven
events. Previous events were held in Shanghai, China (Cloud 2009), Melbourne,
Australia (Cloud 2010 & UCC 2011), Chennai, India (UCC 2010), Chicago, USA (UCC
2012), Dresden, Germany (UCC 2013), London, UK (UCC 2014), Limassol, Cyprus
(UCC 2015), Shanghai, China (UCC 2016), Austin, Texas, USA (UCC 2017), Zurich,
Switzerland (UCC 2018), Auckland, New Zealand (UCC 2019) and online during the
pandemic (UCC 2020).

UCC 2021 will be hosted at the University of Leicester. The city of Leicester
is a major city in the middle of country and is well connected to the rest of
the world with road, rail and air networks.

UCC 2021 offers a technical programme, workshops, tutorials, and a doctoral
symposium. The event will have a co-located 8th International Conference on
Big Data Computing Applications and Technologies (BDCAT 2021).

Authors are invited to submit original, unpublished research manuscripts in all
areas of Cloud and Utility Computing and related computing paradigms such as
Fog/Edge, Serverless and Distributed Computing.

NEW in 2021: UCC submissions continue to use a double column format for review
based on the new single-column template to facilitate the new ACM production
process; the details are described in separate submission instructions.

Also NEW in 2021: Authors of accepted papers can opt into reproducible research
decoration; the details are described below.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Formal and qualitative aspects of Cloud technology
• Security, trust and privacy in Clouds, and Cloud-hosted Blockchains
• Architectural models and patterns to achieve Utility in Clouds
• Cloud business and legal implications beyond technology
• Cloud Computing middleware, stacks, tools, delivery networks and services at all layers (XaaS)
• Cloud large-scale foundations for Big Data, IoT, and real-time analytics
• Cloud management: autonomic, adaptive, self-*, SLAs, and monitoring
• Cloud-native application design, engineering and serverless/microservice implementation
• Cloud, Fog and edge/mobile devices management, hierarchy models, and business models
• Designs and deployment models for Clouds: private, public, hybrid, federated, aggregated
• Economic and business models of Clouds and services
• High Performance Computing and the Cloud
• Innovative cloud applications and experiences
• Integration of Cloud systems with Fog/edge and IoT devices, continuum computing
* Leading edge topics such as hybrid quantum clouds, coded computing and FHE
• Mobile and energy-efficient use of Clouds
• Networking for clouds and data centres
• Performance analysis and modelling of cloud systems and applications
• Policy languages and programming models
• Principles and theoretical foundations of Utility Computing
• Resource management and scalability: brokering, scheduling, capacity planning, and elasticity
• Utility-driven platforms for Clouds
• Utility-driven models and mechanisms for interclouds / federations
• Virtualization, containerization, composition, orchestration and other enablers

Important Dates (all AoE - Anywhere on Earth):

Paper submissions due: August 15, 2021
Notification of acceptance: October 1, 2021
Camera ready papers due: October 31, 2021
Early registration deadline: October 31, 2021

Check separate UCC calls for workshops, tutorials and other tracks.

Reproducibility:

The authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit supporting materials
to be made publicly available as 'source materials' in the ACM Digital Library.
The materials (data, code, models etc.) will be vetted by an evaluation process
run by a separate committee. This submission is voluntary but encouraged for
better highlighting the contributions that facilitate high-quality research.
Papers that pass through the process successfully will receive badges printed
on them.

Awards and Special Issues:

A selection commission chaired by the UCC 2021 technical programme committee
will select and acknowledge the best paper and the best student paper to
receive an award during the conference.

Authors of highly rated papers from UCC 2021 will be invited to submit an
extended version to special issues of prestigious journals, including the
SpringerOpen Journal of Cloud Computing.

Program Committee Chairs:

• Ivona Brandic, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
• Rizos Sakellariou, University of Manchester, UK
• Josef Spillner, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland