COSMOS: A Platform for Seamless Mobile Services in the Cloud

• Main Authors: Sankaranarayanan, J., Hacigumus, H., Tatemura, J.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Calendars; Context; Middleware; Mobile communication; Mobile computing; Mobile handsets; Motion pictures
• ISSN: 1551-6245; 2375-0324
• DOI: 10.1109/MDM.2011.68

The mobility of today is defined by the multitude of apps, which while working in isolation, can achieve a variety of tasks for the mobile user. The mobility of tomorrow is envisioned as one where mobile apps work together by sharing information to create a seamless mobile experience, where the focus is the mobility of the user but not the device. A Platform as a Service (PaaS) system called COSMOS (stands for Clouddb for Seamless Mobile Services) is proposed to provide the necessary support for seamless mobility. COSMOS is a multitenant, SLA-aware, cloud based PaaS system, which is currently under active development. The core component of COSMOS is the Sharing Middleware (SMILE), which provides the infrastructure for mobile apps residing on COSMOS to share data actively with one another. SMILE allows for management of SLAs on the shared data, which means that some serious technical challenges will have to be overcome in order to guarantee the desired level of access on the shared data to all those who access it. The key challenge is in ensuring that SLA guarantees are provided in the face of multiple users with diverse workloads and SLA requirements, while providing performance guarantees for the data owners in sharing data with others using performance isolation policies. Additional services for mobile apps, such as mobile context, recommendation and analytics are proposed by leveraging on SMILE. The challenges in designing COSMOS and SMILE as well as solution strategies are discussed.