SATURN 2019

This talk will cover several topics relevant to mobile computing in disadvantaged environments, including disaster areas and the tactical edge. The focus will be on using a microservice-based architecture to best provide capability to users in these environments. We will start by exploring the specific challenges that disadvantaged environments pose to effective computing, which include network, computational, and power limitations.

Next, we will discuss the architectural approaches that address these challenges. We will start by suggesting what we consider to be the most important quality attributes that a software solution should support in order to best provide capability to the user, given the environmental limitations. This may include (but is not limited to) attributes such as survivability, resiliency, scalability, adaptability, security, and performance.

Finally, we will examine how a microservices approach can support the desired architectural quality attributes, drawing on our experience with various projects in this domain. Several approaches, technologies, and hardware platforms will be examined as exemplars, including a variety of microservice management and orchestration approaches.