Bradford computer scientists on cloud nine
University of Bradford computer scientists have created the UK's first university-based cloud computing facility.
The development means that the University is able to host data securely, without using any external provider.
The achievement is the result of work led by Dr Mariam Kiran and Dr Mumtaz Kamala and involving a team of PhD students from the cloud computing research group in the . It means that Bradford is developing the next generation of cloud engineers, capable of researching and finding solutions to key issues facing cloud computing.
Known as BradStack, and using servers distributed across multiple sites in the department, the system is able to handle a variety of loads and host software services while at the same time facilitate game-changing research into big data and building clouds from scratch into fully functional systems.
Dr Kiran said: “Our vision is that BradStack will be able to create and offer cloud computing services to research students and experimental space for other research groups. Our PhD students are already looking at issues of security, governance, service level agreements, fault tolerance and performance analysis, trying out their algorithms on BradStack Cloud.
“Our initial experiments have shown that BradStack is fully functional and self-sustaining and now we are partnering with the internet of things lab to help support them. As a group we pride ourselves on doing core cloud data centre research and software engineering, making us unique across the UK.”
Pictured clockwise from back left: PhD Students Bashir Mohammed, Al Noaman Al Shaidy, Kabiru Maiyama, Arjumand Naveed and group leads Dr Mumtaz Kamala and Dr Mariam Kiran.