The PaaSport project focuses on resolving the data and application portability issues that exist in the Cloud PaaS market through a flexible and efficient deployment and migration approach. To this end, PaaSport will specify and deliver a thin, non-intrusive Cloud-broker, to implement the enabling tools and technologies, and to deploy fully operational prototypes and large-scale demonstrators.
PaaSport will enable European Cloud vendors (in particular SMEs) to roll out semantically interoperable PaaS offerings1 leveraging their competitive advantage, the quality of service and value delivered to their customers, and improving their outreach to potential customers, particularly the pan-European software industry. PaaSport will also enable European Software SMEs to deploy business applications on the best-matching Cloud PaaS and to seamlessly migrate these applications on demand. PaaSport contributes to aligning and interconnecting heterogeneous PaaS offerings, overcoming the vendor lock-in problem and lowering switching costs.
In particular, the PaaSport Marketplace will enable European Software SMEs, such as the members of the Software SME Associations participating in the consortium, to seamlessly deploy and migrate their applications to the best-matching Cloud PaaS offering. From a business perspective, PaaSport aims at lifting the barriers that impede exporting ones applications and data from a Cloud platform, thus empowering Cloud customers and Cloud application developers (in particular, European SME Software vendors) and allowing them to choose freely the Cloud PaaS offering that best fits their needs. PaaSport is also expected to empower the position and encourage the entrance of European SME Cloud vendors in an emerging market which is currently dominated by American colossi, such as Google and Amazon. From a scientific and technical perspective, relevant issues and discussions in regards to Cloud PaaS interoperability are becoming lively (see Section 1.2), leaving room for the PaaSport consortium to work towards the specification and implementation of a semantically-enhanced Cloud-broker architecture and marketplace.
The members of the Intelligent Systems Lab participate in this project through the International Hellenic University, Thessaloniki, Greece.