SSS is a well-established international forum on distributed systems, fault tolerance, safety, and security. This year, SSS 2026 introduces a new dedicated track focused on practical challenges and open problems arising from real-world systems and deployments.

Track E: Real-World Distributed Systems and Operational Challenges welcomes contributions that bridge distributed systems research with practical deployment, empirical evaluation, and operational experience.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Deployment and implementation of distributed algorithms and protocols

* Real-world case studies of distributed and dependable systems, including operational IoT and cyber-physical deployments such as automotive infrastructures

* Industry-driven challenges in distributed systems

* Empirical evaluation and benchmarking of distributed systems

* Comparative and reproducibility studies for distributed systems

* Large-scale configuration, orchestration, and systems management

* Reliability, resilience, and fault tolerance in deployed systems and cyber-physical infrastructures

* Security and privacy protection for operational distributed systems and infrastructures

* Scalability bottlenecks and debugging experiences in real deployments

* Operational lessons learned from distributed systems in practice

The track explicitly welcomes submissions that may not naturally fit traditional theory-focused distributed systems venues, while still maintaining high scientific and engineering standards. The aim is to strengthen the interaction between distributed systems research and operational practice, including contributions from industry practitioners and academia-industry collaborations.

Submission information, formatting instructions, and publication details follow the general SSS 2026 CFP and are available on the conference website:

https://sss2026.conf.lip6.fr/

Track Chair

* Magnus Almgren, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Technical Program Committee

* David De Andres Martinez, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain
* Marcello Cinque, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
* Zbigniew Kalbarczyk, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
* Dan Kim, The University of Queensland, Australia
* Roberto Palmieri, Lehigh University, USA
* Peng Liu, Penn State University, USA
* Antonio Pecchia, Università degli Studi del Sannio, Italy
* Behrooz Sangchoolie, RISE, Sweden
* Marcus Völp, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
* Valentin Tudor, Ericsson, Sweden
* Katinka Wolter, FU Berlin, Germany