Benjamin Weder

Domain: The deployment of distributed multi‐component cloud applications typically requires a combination of multiple heterogeneous deployment technologies. A different combination of deployment technologies should be chosen due to varying deployment qualities, such as the functional suitability and reliability of the deployment technologies for the deployment of the components. A suboptimal selection of deployment technologies makes the deployment error‐prone.Problem: Selecting and maintaining the combination of deployment technologies requires modeling effort and expertise.Contributions: We present a method that automatically selects deployment technologies based on a knowledge base of deployment scenarios and corresponding deployment qualities of deployment technologies.Evaluation: We show the practical applicability and the usefulness of our method. For the practical applicability, we conduct two case studies based on an open‐source reference architecture application and a real‐world industry application using a prototypical implementation of our method. For the usefulness, we conduct a user study in which participants assign deployment technologies with and without our method.Conclusions: Our method is a useful contribution that reduces the modeling effort and the required expertise when maintaining the combination of deployment technologies. Further, our method enhances the deployment quality.

The application of quantum computing to combinatorial optimization problems is attracting increasing research interest, resulting in diverse approaches and research streams. This study aims at identifying, classifying, and understanding existing solution approaches as well as typical use cases in the field. The obtained classification schemes are based on a full-text analysis of 156 included papers. Our results can be used by researchers and practitioners to (i) better understand adaptations to and utilizations of existing gate-based and quantum annealing approaches and (ii) identify typical use cases for quantum computing in areas such as graph optimization, routing, and scheduling.