Guest Lecture by prof. Edouard Bugnion: Dark clouds and transparent clouds

“The digital era of today is defined by the dominance of the mobile+cloud mode of operation. The front-end is limited to the Google-Apple duopoly, which determines what you are allowed to do and see with your phone. The backends are slightly more competitive, with offerings from a handful of content delivery networks and megawatt- sized datacenter operators offering advanced services on a global scale alongside a shrinking set of enterprise-owned private clouds. The front-end and backend are inherently connected and interdependent.

As a case study, I will discuss how digital contact tracing leveraged the mobile+cloud model, together with the lessons learned from that experience, and the controlling influence of the mobile+cloud era. I will discuss some of the reasons behind this dominance, and some of the implications and challenges for consumers, enterprises and government organisations that need to manage overall risks by trading off technological risks, operational risks, and legal security. I will conclude with some early research directions aimed at adding transparency-by-design into systems and applications.”