Dr. Wolfgang Ziegler
Research and development Services

z-rands is the company I founded 2014 for professional spare-time-work outside my employment at Fraunhofer, like working as expert for ETSI or for the European Commission. I am computer scientist with more than 45 years experience in ICT covering domains like IT service, research and developement, and standardisation.

I made my first professionel ICT experience in the 1970s as a student research assistant at IBM’s Scientific Centre in Heidelberg while I studied physics in Heidelberg. Funny enough, this was my first exposure to virtualisation which became important for me again after decades.

Later I abandoned physics and continued my journey towards informatics as system administrator in the data center of the Mannheim University  with punchcards and mainframes, then I joined the system administration group for the mainframes of the the German national research center for mathematics and data processing in Sankt Augustin (GMD).  As the data centres evolved towards cluster-based computing I focused on distributed computing and high performance parallel computing with massive parallel computers. Meanwhile, GMD had been merged with Fraunhofer and the next stage was centered around different aspects of resource management and sharing, first as Grid computing and then Cloud computing.

In 2020 my contract with Fraunhofer ended and I continue my professional work with z-rands since then.

I made my first professionel ICT experience in the 1970s as a student research assistant at IBM’s Scientific Centre in Heidelberg while I studied physics in Heidelberg. Funny enough, this was my first exposure to virtualisation which became important for me again after decades.

Later I abandoned physics and continued my journey towards informatics as system administrator in the data center of the Mannheim University  with punchcards and mainframes, then I joined the system administration group for the mainframes of the the German national research center for mathematics and data processing in Sankt Augustin (GMD).  As the data centres evolved towards cluster-based computing I focused on distributed computing and high performance parallel computing with massive parallel computers. Meanwhile, GMD had been merged with Fraunhofer and the next stage was centered around different aspects of resource management and sharing, first as Grid computing and then Cloud computing.

In 2020 my contract with Fraunhofer ended and I continue my professional work with z-rands since then.

Areas of expertise

  • Cloud and Grid Computing
  • Resource Management and Scheduling
  • Grid and Cloud Service Level Management
  • Cloud data protection, data security and legal aspects
  • Service Level Agreements:
    – Dynamic, electronic Service Level Agreements
    – Languages for describing services and service level objectives
    – Legal aspects of electronic Service Level Agreements
  • ICT standardisation, AI standardisation
  • Software Licensing and License Management for Distributed Computing
  • Developing, proposing and running European co-funded Projects
  • Agile development with SCRUM

Recent and current activities and positions

Independent Expert: Appointments as proposal evaluator and project reviewer for the European Commission since 2006

I worked as Expert for ETSI 2014-2015 in the Special Task Force for Cloud Computing standards. The STF produced four report you can find here: Report 1 (Users’ needs), Report 2 (Open Source), Report 3 (Interoperability and Security), Report 4 (Maturity Snapshop).

I am Certified Product Owner: since 2010 certified by the Scrum Alliance

I am active in the Open Grid Forum as

Vice President of Community since 2015

Area Director Applications  since 2011

GRAAP-WG co-chair since 2000

DIN member and active in NA 043-01-38 AA “Verteilte Anwendungsplattformen und Dienste” (the mirror group to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC38), currently also contribuiting to DIN’s second edition of the AI standards roadmap

ISO/IEE JTC1 SC38 member and active as expert through the OGF liaison and as delegate of DIN in Working Group 3

AI Alliance member since 2019

Member of the representative body for disabled in Fraunhofer SCAI until 2020

Barrier Scout since 2021

Non-exhaustive list of achievements until today

I like educating students and always tried to integrate them in project-specific research and development as a base for their respective theses. Also, most publications and talks are resulting from the work in projects. In contrast, contributing to panels is most often not directly relaated to projects but stems from my experience gained over years. I appreciate supporting the advancement of science as a reviewer of conference papers and journal articles. Finally, for me it is always pleasant  to use the opportunity of joint research to organise events like workshops and seminars together with colleagues.

European and German projects

While I worked for Fraunhofer I initiated and participated in a number of European and German projects which are briefly described in the following tabs.

Voluntary services

Standardisation

For the Open Grid Forum as

Vice President of Community

Area Director Applications

GRAAP-WG co-chair

At ISO as

expert contributing ISO/IEC JTC1 SC38

At DIN (the German national standards body) as

expert contributing to NA 043-01-38 AA “Verteilte Anwendungsplattformen und Dienste” (the mirror group to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC38)

Others

Freundeskreis Quellenhof non-profit association

Member of the board

Maintaining the website

Sozialhelden non-profit association 

Contributing as Barrier Scout

If you enjoyed this web page and consider my expertise useful for you please contact me.

Ready to find out with you how I can contribute to your Research & Development

Related news

Worked as evaluator of proposals for a European project

Started a new position at scapos AG (www.scapos.de/).

Contributing as senior scientist to the organisation of the Open Call of the European project Inno4Scale (www.inno4scale.eu/)..

Updating the web pages of the Freundeskreis Quellenhof

 

Some time off ;-)

Continued working as standardisation expert for the European HSbooster.eu project providing advice on to a running European project in the field of cyber security

Paricipated in a two day workshop of mFUND (accompanying research of projects funded by the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport) mFUND Ideensprint “Gemeinsam unterwegs”

Continued working as standardisation expert for the European HSbooster.eu project providing advice on to a running European project in the field of cyber security

Working as standardisation expert for the European HSbooster.eu project providing advice on to a running European project in the field of cyber security

Updating the web pages of the Freundeskreis Quellenhof

Working for the EC reviewing MCSA proposals

Site inspection and evaluation of accessibility of a new office space for a company in Cologne

Working for the EC reviewing MCSA proposals

Working for the EC reviewing MCSA proposals

Giving a presentation on Cloud Standards at the BIBB in Bonn

Nothing about us without us.

We had an intense and fruitful workshop in Leipzig on the 18. and 19.of May organised and hosted by the SOZIALHELDEN e.V. (“Social Heroes”). People with and without diabilities came together to discuss issues in public transport and ideas how to overcome them. The workshop was crowned Thursday afternoon by a well received presentation of our findings at the booth of the Federal Ministry of Digital and Transport at the ITF 2022 Summit (International Transport Forum with this year’s focus “Transport for Inclusive Societies”).

The following photos by courtesy of Andi Weiland | Gesellschaftsbilder.de give you some impressions from

workshop (1)

workshop (2)

and

booth (1)

booth (2)

booth (3)

Working for the EC reviewing MCSA proposals

Currently working as expert for the Federal Ministry of Education and Research evaluating project proposals

Finished writing three chapters on Grid and Cloud standards and Computational Life Science R&D in the last decades using Grids and Clouds for a book in the Springer seriesStudies in Big Data” edited by colleagues

 

 

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