Open Systems. DBMS 2020, Volume 28, Number 2

COVER FEATURE

QUANTUM COMPUTING
Quantum computing
Quantum computing has become a reality. Quantum computers are available to everybody via cloud service or simulation. Toolkits are available that invite practitioners to start their own quantum software projects and thus get used to this novel technology. In this article we evaluate technologies to help developers to start their own quantum software business.
Jose Luis Hevia (jluis.hevia@alhambrait.com), quantum chief technology officer, Guido Peterssen (guido.peterssen@alhambrait.com), quantum chief operating officer, Alhambra IT; Christof Ebert (christof.ebert@vector.com), Senior Member, IEEE; Mario Piattini (mario.piattini@uclm.es), quantum chief research officer, Alarcos Research Group.

OSJ FORECAST
“New Reality” Update: OSJ Big Seven Forecasts, v. 2022
After surviving a period of instability and widespread shift to remote work, businesses are trying to get back to the traditional office culture, yet those new work practices could hardly be compared to the pre-crisis ones. Employees’ behavior has changed significantly, while companies have already deployed tools to support remote work, having modified their internal business processes. In addition, the digitalization of many workflows facilitates making them more intelligent. The health crisis will no doubt eventually come to an end, but the trends it spawned are going to remain in place.
Nikolai Smirnov (nsmirnov@osp.ru), CIO.ru editor-in-chief (Moscow).

PLATFORMS
Open Source Hardware
Hardware that can be manufactured from free and open source descriptions has gained a lot of momentum. This article gives a general introduction, focusing on electronics and integrated circuits, corresponding open ecosystems and organizations, and highlights benefits and challenges.
Frank Hannig (frank.hannig@fau.de), lecturer, Jurgen Teich (juergen.teich@fau.de) full professor, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nurnberg.

Base Infrastructure of Modern-Day Digital Platforms
Insufficient performance, high power consumption and cost of the currently used CPU/GPU tandems, as well as the increasing use of deep neural networks have spurred the change of computing edge landscape, necessitating the transition to a new compute infrastructure design paradigm based on the hyperscale architecture.
Alexander Prozorov (ap@rtlab.ru), independent expert; Roman Shnyrev (rvshnyrev@sberbank.ru), executive director, Sber New Technology Solutions Lab; Ilya Alexeyev (ilya@oscloud.ru), independent expert (Moscow).

DATA MANAGEMENT
From Data Anarchy to Monetization
A data-centered architecture is aimed at gaining insights from a heterogeneous environment in order to create a common data pool that could be shared across a company in a consistent way. But to be able to design architectures enabling the transition from a data use anarchy to data monetization, a number of principles must be observed.
Stefan Brock, industry partner, Sergey Kartashev (sergey.kartashev@hpe.com), solutions architect, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (Moscow).

SECURITY
Defensive AI: The Future Is Yesterday
Defensive artificial intelligence (AI) has gained international attention. We discuss what defensive AI means from the perspective of the defender and the adversary. We contend that opportunities exist to apply defensive AI to the foremost problems plaguing cyberspace.
James Bret Michael (bmichael@nps.edu), professor, Naval Postgraduate School; Thomas C . Wingfield (twingfie@rand.org), senior researcher, Rand Corporation.

OPINION
Business intelligence systems: the problem of choice
For companies with state participation and state institutions, import substitution of software has become a necessary tool to reduce costs and minimize sanctions risks, however, commercial organizations today have to choose between domestic and foreign business intelligence systems. Working in conditions of dynamic changes, the emergence of new architectures of analytical systems, the massiveness of the profession of "analyst" require a revision of approaches to the assessment of analytical tools.
Sergey Shestakov (info@luxms.ru), CEO, Alexander Tyutyunnik, business development director, Luxms, (St. Petersburg).

OS MUSEUM
The Computing Architectures Donnybrook
The concept of computer architecture has expanded well beyond its historical boundaries. This article sets forth a more comprehensive framework for the direction of the “Computing Architectures”.
Joseph Williams (joseph.williams@pnnl.gov), Seattle director, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The Pioneers of Russian Computer Graphics
Russian scientists contributed a lot to the creation of the computer graphics discipline, with their research works still influencing the development of this applied science field.
Leonid Karpov (mak@ispras.ru), lead scientist, V.P. Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Dmitry Volkov (vlk@keldysh.ru), fellow, M. V. Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics (Moscow).

OS ACADEMY
From Formal Methods to Explainable and Secure Artificial Intelligence
The September, October, and November Issues of Computer Magazine (IEEE Computer Society, Vol. 54, No. 9, 10, 11 2021) cover the subjects of formal methods in cyberphysical systems, explainable AI, as well as cybersecurity and trust.
Alexander Tyrenko (shoorah@osp.ru), independent writer (Moscow).

Popularly About Datacenters, Albeit in a Serious Way
As part of a series of publications on digitalization (“Digital Transformation. Analysis, Trends, Global Experience”, “Digital Twin”), Rosenergoatom and AlliancePrint issued a book providing an overview of datacenter design methods and the current state of datacenter services market.
Dmitry Volkov (vlk@keldysh.ru), fellow, M. V. Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics (Moscow).