I have diverse experience across building cloud-based SaaS middleware, e-commerce, digitization and migration to cloud. I have over 21 years of experience at IBM Research, Makemytrip, Airtel XLabs and SplashLearn.
I was a Senior Researcher at IBM Research, New Delhi. I also led the distributed systems research group, which looks at building flexible, elastic, modular, scalable and programmable compute infrastructure.
My research interests include power and virtualization management, algorithmic optimization, web server resource allocation, storage management.
My current research is focused on 2 key themes.
1) Self Managed Cloud: We are pursuing two key ideas for effective system management in cloud. The first idea is to identify redundancy - both data and process - and eliminate it. This allows clouds to operate at a level of efficiency that was not possible in traditional data centers. I2Map and Coriolis are example systems that follow this principle. Our second idea is to leverage the information contained in virtual machine images to make system management autonomous. Morpheus and PoVMiner are example systems based on this principle. Our ImageElves system uses image mining for redundancy elimination.
2) Migration to Cloud: Our goal is to seamlessly migrate applications from a captive data center to a cloud, while minimizing the number of human touch points. In our target system, an application would be analyzed to find an optimal sizing and placement, migrated from the captive environment, adjusted for adaptation in the cloud, and reconfigured automatically. The Rapid Adjustment System captures our perspective on how migration to cloud should happen. Systems like Coriolis and PoVMiner help migration to be performed almost automatically and at very low cost.
Recent Publications:
Virtual Machine Consolidation in the Wild. Akshat Verma, Juhi Bagrodia, and Vimmi Jaiswal. (To Appear) ACM/IFIP Middleware 2014.
LVD: Lean Virtual Disks. Gaurab Basu, Shripad Nadgowda and Akshat Verma. (To Appear) ACM/IFIP Middleware 2014.
Mitigating Interference in Cloud Services by Middleware Reconfiguration. Amiya Maji, Subrata Mitra, Bowen Zhou, Saurabh Bagchi and Akshat Verma. (To Appear) ACM/IFIP Middleware 2014.
Columbus: Enabling Configuration Analytics for Simplifying Cloud Management. Rahul Balani, Deepak Jeswani, Dipyaman Banerjee and Akshat Verma. ICDCS 2014
Integrated Resiliency Planning in Storage Clouds. Vimmi Jaiswal, Aritra Sen and Akshat Verma. IEEE Trans. on Network and Service Managerment, 2014.
Energy Aware Algorithmic Engineering. Swapnoneel Roy, Atri Rudra, and Akshat Verma. IEEE MASCOTS 2014
I2Map: Cloud Disaster Recovery based on Image-Instance Mapping. Shripad Nadgowda, Praveen Jayachandran and Akshat Verma. Middleware 2013
ImageElves: Rapid and Reliable System Updates in the Cloud. Deepak Jeswani, Akshat Verma, Praveen Jayachandran and Kamal Bhattacharya. ICDCS 2013
CloudPD: Problem Determination and Diagnosis in Shared Dynamic Clouds. Bikash Sharma, Praveen Jayachandran, Akshat Verma, and Chita Das. DSN 2013
An Energy Complexity Model for Algorithms. Swapnoneel Roy, Atri Rudra, and Akshat Verma: Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS 2013)
Coriolis: Scalable VM Clustering in Clouds. Daniel Campello, Carlos Crespo, Akshat Verma, Raju Rangaswami and Praveen Jayachandran. ICAC 2013 (6-page short paper).
Morpheus: Learning Configurations by Example. Deepak Jeswani, Rahul Balani, Akshat Verma, Kamal Bhattacharya. IEEE/IFIP Network Integrated Management (IM), 2013.
Shredder: GPU-Accelerated Incremental Storage and Computation. Pramod Bhatotia, Rodrigo Rodrigues and Akshat Verma. Usenix FAST, 2012.
For a list of my (representative) publications and to download any papers, please click here
Drop me a note if you want a paper not listed here.
Contact MyFullName AT in DOT ibm DOT com
External Collaborators
I had the good fortune to interact with some very good students and faculty members.
Recent students interned OR collaborated(Not exhaustive):
2012: Amiya Maji, Neha Bagrodia
2011: Carlos Crespo, Swapnoneel Roy, Bikash Sharma, Ashwin Venkatraman, Pramod Bhatotia
2010: Sankalp Gera, Ankit Garg
2009: Ricardo Koller, Gautam Kumar, Nikhil Madaan
2008: Ricardo Koller, Amit Sharma
Faculty:
Raju Rangaswamy (SRCMap, Generalized ERSS Tree Model, etc)
Saurabh Bagchi (Application Reconfiguration)
Rodrigo Rodrigues (Shredder)
Atri Rudra (Energy Complexity)
Chita Das (CloudPD)
Sandeep Sen (Prefetch Model)
Information For students
The Distributed Systems group take students as interns during the summer. The expectation from an intern is to take an independent problem, solve it, and show the effectiveness of the solution. We prefer students who can work independently and have the motivation to work remotely as well beyond the internship (if required) to polish the work. We also seek students for longer term FTH positions (post-doc, co-op)
Professional Activites:
Program Chair: ICARE 2013
Chair: Poster & Demo, Middleware 2010.
PC Member:
ACM ICPE 2012, ACM/IFIP/Usenix Middleware 2010, IEEE Cluster 2010, ACM Middleware 2009
Reviewer (Incomplete list): ICDCS, Performance, Middleware, ICS, ACM ToN, ACM ToS, ACM ToIT, JPDC.
Awards and Honours:
JBNSTS Scholarship (1996-2000): A maximum of 12 scholarships are awarded across all science disciplines in the state of West Bengal.
Best Paper Award (HiPC 2006): Algorithmic Ramifications of Prefetching in Memory Hierarchy (with Prof Sandeep Sen)
IBM Outstanding Innovation Award (2013): Server Consolidation
IBM Master Inventor (2013)
IBM Client Value Outstanding Technical Achievement Award (2010): CloudMap
IBM Technical Excellence Award (2007): Atlantis
IBM Bravo Award (2004): STEPS