The Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) invites for the fourth time to the yearly scientific symposium on the topic "Operating the Cloud". HPI’s FutureSOC Lab is a high performance IT infrastructure powered by its industrial partners EMC², HP, Fujitsu and SAP. It provides a free-of-charge platform for related research. Hence, it is the adequate environment to host this event.

Cloud computing is experiencing a growth in attention world-wide. The necessity emerges from ever increasing amounts of data that have to be stored and computed by companies of almost any area of business. Additionally, even in our daily private lives we utilize cloud services to synchronize files, keep track of our appointments, etc. However, we are still observing a gap between results of academic research and practical implementations cloud operators use. It is our goal to provide a persistent platform for representatives of academia and industry to bridge this gap.

The symposium aims to connect industry and academia by inviting speakers and calling for paper presentations. On this occasion we seek for research papers and practitioners' reports in the fields of operating, administrating, and utilizing cloud systems. Please submit your contribution to the electronic submission system we use (see Links). Accepted submissions will be presented at the symposium in Potsdam. "Operating the Cloud" aims to present a versatile compilation of talks which allow a deep exchange of experience and knowledge.