On 25-26 Nov 2019 Microsoft Research (MSR) in Cambridge, UK organized a workshop where PhD students working on topics relevant to the next-generation cloud infrastructure in Europe were invited to participate. During this two-day workshop, the students had the opportunity to present their work to Microsoft researchers, learn about the research Microsoft is doing in MSR Cambridge lab, and discuss the future of the cloud.
Cloud computing relies on cloud infrastructure keeping pace with its massive scale and unending increase in demand. However, the continued doubling of infrastructure performance generation after generation is becoming harder to sustain, particularly when coupled with the need for extremely high availability. MSR aims to invent infrastructure that can meet the scale, performance and availability goals of the future cloud. To this end, MSR leverages a key opportunity offered by the cloud – of stepping away from legacy concerns and developing new technologies for data centres.
The cross-disciplinary team of Microsoft Research in Cambridge is working on a wide range of topics spanning all layers of the cloud stack. They are working on pioneering research projects covering compute, storage, and networking. To address the challenges in these areas, Microsoft adopt a holistic approach by performing research that spans optics, networking, distributed systems, storage, operating systems, verification, and hardware-software co-design.
FONTE ESR3 Stenio M. Ranzini from DTU was lucky to receive a personal invitation to this exclusive and by-invitation-only event and participated in both day, both learning about cutting edge research at MSR as well as being abe to present his own research conducted within FONTE to both fellow attendees and established researchers within Microsoft Research Cambridge. His trip was fully sponsored by MSR and had strong element of training in cutting-edge research, with additional elements of transferable skills training (How to Give a Research Talk by Simon Peyton Jones, MSR Cambridge) and research dissemination (poster session and breakout event).