Planning Grant: I/UCRC for Configuration Analytics and Automation (CCAA)
1161015 University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC); Ehab Al-Shaer 1161009 George Mason University (GMU); Sushil Jajodia 1161044 University of California-Davis; Shyhtsun Wu
The University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC), George Mason University (GMU) and the University of California-Davis (UCD) are collaborating to establish the proposed center, with UNCC as the lead institution. The planning grant will permit these universities to coordinate, prepare and conduct meetings with potential industry members who have expressed interest in joining CCAA.
The goal of the proposed center is to build the critical mass of an inter-disciplinary academic researchers and industry partnership for addressing the current and future challenges of configuration analytics and automation to improve enterprise IT system and service manageability, performance, assurability, security and sustainability; and applying innovative analytics and automation to complex networked systems including: enterprise networking of clouds and data centers, hybrid and cyber-physical systems, smart critical infrastructures, mission-oriented networks (sensor-actuator networks), virtual overlays, social networks and mobile systems.
The proposed center will address the need of large Enterprises in the private sectors dealing with regulatory compliance requirements; government organizations; and IT product providers who have significant share of the market either in private sector or government and those niche products adopted by specific industries such as IT management systems, and emerging cloud services who are essential participants. The three participating universities have a strong record of industry collaboration and technology transfer. In addition, CCAA has a strong educational components that includes training undergraduate and graduate students, creating a new multi-disciplinary certificate on Configuration Analytics at UNCC, and involving minority and under-represented students through courses, seminars, workshops and research projects.
The purpose of this project is to plan for creating an I/UCRC Center for Configurations Analytics and Automation (CCAA). The goal of the Center for Configurations Analytics and Automation (CCAA) is to build the critical mass of inter-disciplinary academic researchers and industry partners for addressing the current and future challenges of configuration analytics and automation to improve service assurability, security and resiliency of enterprise IT systems, cloud/SDN data centers, and cyber-physical systems by applying innovative analytics and automation. The vision of CCAA is to establish an internationally recognized collaborative research activity focused on configuration analytics and automation for complex information, communications and technology (ICT) environment. The mission of CCAA is to build the critical mass of inter-disciplinary academic researchers and industry partnerships to undertake pre-competitive research that addresses the current and future challenges of analytics and automation. The research objectives are focused on improving enterprise IT system management, security, resiliency, service assurability and performance; and the application of innovative analytics and automation to complex networked systems. The applicable domains for this research include complex enterprise IT environments, ‘Cloud’ and data centers, hybrid cyber-physical systems, smart critical infrastructures, mission-oriented networks (sensor-actuator networks), software defined networks, social networks and mobile systems. CCAA will emphasize, encourage and develop top-quality graduates with knowledge and experience in this field. As executed tasks of this project, the PI had conducted many invited talks in the industry and also arrange for a planning meeting hosted in UNC Charlotte and attended by the industry who are interested in this center area. We can summarize the findings as a result of these talks and meetings as follows: - - There is a tremendous interest on research and development in the area of configuration analytics and automation in industry and government. - There high potential RoI on CCAA R&D area. - CCAA received well-support from industry. UNC Charlotte received 6 letter of commitment and GMU receives 3 letters of commitments. The following are the interested members who have submitted letter of commitment for CCAA: Bank of America, Depository Trust &Clearing Corporation (DTCC), BB&T Bank, Northrop Grumman, MITRE, National Security Agency, DuPont Computers, and National Institute of Standards and Technology.
