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Center Spotlight Series Archive IC4

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The Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce

The Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce (IC4) was established as part of the March 2011 Programme for Government as an enabling action to accelerate exploitation of cloud computing technologies that bridges the gap between research and technology commercialisation. IC4 is a multi-institutional research centre hosted in Dublin City University and comprising research teams at DCU, UCC and AIT.

IC4’s mission is to develop a world-class creative environment within the Centre that will foster innovation and support the development of a team of highly innovative researchers, based at the collaborating universities. Led by its industry members, IC4 focuses its research efforts on an number core research areas namely:

  • Scalability and interoperability of cloud infrastructures, platforms and applications
  • Migration to and between clouds
  • Managing and communicating quality-of-service and trust in cloud computing
  • Cloud security risk assessment and response
  • Improving organisational and functional effectiveness and competitiveness of firms through the use or provision of cloud computing solutions

Core Funded Research

Since 2012, IC4 has operated under a core funding grant of €6m from Enterprise Ireland and the IDA that will run until 2018. This core funding is used for the administration of the Centre and to conduct research projects identified with and by the industry members of the Centre. For a nominal membership fee, industry members can join IC4 and benefit from a wide range of benefits including:

  • Preferential licensing rights for IC4 intellectual property
  • Access to all IC4 publications through a password-protected members web site
  • Invitation to regular training events and research workshops (free to members)
  • Participation on project teams
  • On-demand access to researchers
  • Support for targeted and other funded research projects
  • Opportunities to showcase cloud technology and services
  • Networking and collaboration opportunities with other IC4 members and visitors
  • Participation in Steering Board to oversee the IC4 relationship (limited to 6 industry members)

IC4 has grown its membership base from an initial ten founding members to over 70 including organisations of all sizes including Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Inishtech, Bluemetrix, Ostia Solutions and others.

Horizon 2020

IC4 is a partner on three Horizon 2020 projects:

  • CloudLightning - CloudLightning is a €4m 3-year project to design a new architecture for cloud service provision that is based on separation of concerns, self organisation and self-management. CloudLightning makes use of heterogeneous resources which when combined with its novel architecture increases energy efficiency and improves performance.CloudLightning includes 8 partners including IC4@DCU, IC4@UCC, Intel (IC4 Member), I-EAT, NTNU, DUTH, CERTH and Maxeler.
  • PROTECTIVE (Proactive Risk Management through Improved Situational Awareness) - PROTECTIVE is a €4m 3-year H2020 project  designed to improve an organisations ongoing awareness of the risk posed to its business by cyber security attacks. PROTECTIVE includes 10 partners including  IC4@AIT, Email Laundry (IC4 Member),  University of Oxford, TU Darmstadt, PSNC, ITTI, GMV,  CESNET, SYSNO and RoEduNet.
  • RECAP (Reliable Capacity Provisioning and Enhanced Remediation for Distributed Cloud Applications) – RECAP is a €4.6m 3-year project to develop the next generation of cloud/edge/fog computing capacity provisioning and remediation via targeted research advances in cloud infrastructure optimisation, simulation and automation. RECAP includes 9 partners - IC4@DCU, Intel (IC4 Member) Ulm University, BT, Umea University, IMDEA Networks Institute, Tieto, Linknovate, and SATEC.

Targeted Funding

The economic mission of the Centre is to transfer research outcomes to the national industry base to maximise the impact on increased competiveness, income and job creation. In many cases, industry stakeholders require cloud computing solutions specifically for their technical and business problems. IC4 is actively works with industry to:

  • Assess the feasibility of addressing a particular technical or business problem
  • Specify the business and technical requirements of identified solutions
  • Design and develop a solution though collaboration between IC4 and the firm

Over 100 companies have benefitted from these engagements using a variety of funding mechanisms. These include:

Engagement and Outreach

Many people are aware of IC4 through its active and ambitious engagement and outreach programme. The Centre runs or participates in over 50 events annually with over 2,000 attendees per annum. In April each year, we hold the National Conference on Cloud Computing and Commerce (NC4), a free one-day conference showcasing both academic research and professional best practice. Now in its fourth year, NC4 features over 40 presentations covering the wide spectrum of topics related to cloud computing.

IC4 recently sponsored an international trust conference (www.fint2016.com) organised by DCU Business School, which focused on trust within and between organizations.  A panel of IC4 members (Aidan Gallagher (Inishtech), Jack Nagle (Verizon) and Paul Dwyer (Cyber Risk International)) opened the conference by engaging in a lively debate on trust in technology, and the conference contained a number of other sessions focusing on trust in digital work platforms, trust in virtual work teams, and privacy aspects of trust in technology.


For more information on IC4 and our upcoming events, please visit our website at www.ic4.ie or contact theo.lynn@dcu.ie.