“No one can do research in isolation”

Congratulations on achieving your PhD, Nabil! Could you tell us more about your research focus?

Nabil El Ioini: We hear people nowadays talking a lot about cloud computing – they use the cloud to share their data, photos, videos and all sorts of digital assets without having to worry about where or how the data is stored and shared. The only important thing is that they can retrieve it whenever they need it using any type of device (computer, tablet, smartphone etc). To give an analogy, we can think of the cloud as an electrical power supplier - whatever electrical appliance we plug into it, the power supplier will supply the needed electrical power. All that is required by the appliance is to support the interfaces provided by the power supplier (e.g., plug type, voltage). So essentially, cloud computing represents an innovative business model for managing IT resources by making them common utility services that can be purchased and consumed by different stakeholders. However, customers need assurances about the quality of the supplied services. My research focuses on investigating, designing and implementing assurance techniques for cloud quality assurance. I have worked together with my supervisors and colleagues on the concept of cloud services certification: to design a systematic approach to assess cloud services, then to continuously monitor their quality at runtime to maintain a valid certificate.

Could you give an example of what you’ve been doing?

The lack of visibility into the internal structure of the cloud is still troubling companies in terms of reliability, privacy and security. It is common to hear people say “well we don’t know where our data will be stored” or “are we sure that no one will have access to our data?” At the same time, cloud customers rely entirely on what the cloud providers claim and on their reputation. This is particularly true when it comes to the big players in the cloud market such as Amazon, Google or Microsoft. The common refrain that we hear is “I trust Amazon because it’s Amazon”. While this could be true in many cases, there is still the need for real evidence to support it.

But why would big companies like Amazon want their cloud services certified?

A certification framework would allow big and small cloud providers to concretely guarantee the quality of their services by providing real evidence to their customers that has been collected and validated using a transparent and systematic process

What have you learnt from doing your PhD here in Bolzano?

I’ve learnt many lessons doing the PhD but I think the most valuable one is the importance of the PhD supervisor. Having a supervisor with a clear vision of the research goals as well as being actively involved in the research done by his or her PhD students gives a great sense of confidence, and guides the student every step of the way. The second lesson concerns the research group and collaborations. In my opinion, no one can do research in isolation - without interacting with others and critically discussing ideas it is difficult to come up with new and innovative ideas, and I would say that I was fortunate enough to have worked with people both in Bolzano and in University of Milan (my PhD co-supervisors), who have helped me grow and develop my research skills and abilities.

As you’re originally from Morocco, why did you decide to come to Bolzano?

It is a long story, but basically I would say that the unibz being a small and more applied university were the two main reasons for me to choose it.

What do you like about living and working here?

Because it’s a small city, Bolzano has lots of potential to build solid connections between the University and industry, which in turn can be reflected in the living and working style. From my point of view, I think that apart from living amongst the mountains, which has been always a dream of mine, Bolzano is a great place to bring up a family and have good opportunities to innovate in many fields.

And your next step?

We are not done yet - we are still performing experiments on a large-scale industrial setting with big players in the field such as British Telecom. We are also considering some extensions to our approach.