*** Deadline extension: December 22nd (23:59 GMT) ***

Cloud computing provides great potential in terms of meeting elastic computational demands. This applies to requirements regarding hardware specifications (number of cores, CPU architecture, memory size, etc.), software stack (operating system, libraries, runtime environments, etc.), and other criteria (such as cost models, geographical location, etc.). This circumvents a lot of the restrictions associated with distributed systems that preceded the cloud.

However, vendor lock-in is a common and serious hindrance in cloud platforms. Cloud service providers have understandable reasons to retain users and hence some may not be motivated to support portability or interoperability with other competitors in the cloud market. From the user's perspective, however, vendor lock-in could involve substantial development and maintenance costs, and could extend to serious concerns such as privacy and security.

Hence, more research is called for in order to rise above the shortcomings of one solution and to support data and application portability across different cloud platforms. Sharing experiences and strategies is the obvious first step in this direction. The CrossCloud workshop will help in bringing these issues to light, and to present the latest approaches to address the associated challenges.

We solicit technical papers on the design, implementation, and evaluation of federated cloud architectures. We also invite contributions detailing the state of the art, open issues, and standardization efforts. Submissions will be referred by at least 3 TPC members. Papers will be selected based on their technical merit and the experience they present to this emerging field. All accepted workshop papers will be published via IEEE Xplore. Authors of the best papers will also be invited to submit an extended version of their work to a special article collection at the SpringerOpen Journal of Internet Services and Applications (JISA).

We are also pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be Adrian Cole, author of the Apache jclouds library among other cross-cloud projects. All information is available on the CrossCloud website.

Authors are encouraged, but not limited, to cover the following topics:
* Supporting cloud application portability: priorities, restrictions, and lock-in mitigation measures.
* Cloud API interoperability: study cases and experiences with data and applications.
* Interoperability between managed cloud services (e.g. MapReduce, DB, message queues, etc.).
* Cloud-bursting: multi-cloud resource brokering and scheduling strategies.
* Meta-cloud systems: distributed systems management (load balancing, performance optimisation, enforcing security and privacy policies, etc.) across multiple cloud vendors.
* Cross-cloud SDKs and APIs: design, maintenance support and performance evaluation.
* Cloud agility: flexibility in transitioning systems (including production) between different vendors.
* Experiences in assembling federated cloud architectures, including highlights of costs and benefits.
* Case studies in mitigating the costs associated with building federated cloud systems.
* Virtual machine portability and scheduling across different infrastructures.
* Identity and access management across infrastructure boundaries.
* Hybrid cloud infrastructures: public and private clouds, different public/private clouds, cloud and grid systems, etc.
* Reconciling non-functional application requirements (primarily privacy and security) across multiple SLAs.