LACCA

Background:

Cloud software is now a central component of our everyday digital lives. Cloud applications can often be used directly from the web browser without installation and offer convenient features such as data synchronization or live collaboration. At the same time, this development has its downsides: It is often unclear where and in what form personal data is processed and stored. In addition, cloud software does not offer offline-availability and cannot be used if the internet connection is interrupted (e.g. when travelling or in the event of a crisis). This dependence on cloud servers is not only a potential problem for users, but also for software providers: A growing number of users leads to higher server costs and large data collections pose a potential data protection and security problem.

In recent years, a counter-move­ment has emerged under the term "Local-First": Software that offers the same convenience features as traditional cloud software, but shifts large parts of data processing and data storage back to the end device. This leads to reduced latency, avoids the central aggregation of sensitive data and allows individual functions to be used offline. A major disadvantage of the local-first approach is the increased complexity of software development. While all data is managed on the server in classic client/server architectures, a local-first application becomes a distributed system with non-trivial properties: Data is stored decentrally and individual clients/devices are temporarily offline and inaccessible.

Our goal:

The aim of this project is to make local-first software applicable to broader use-cases. To this end, we will evaluate and expand current research approaches on the basis of specific use cases from industry partners. An important research question is the gradual transformation from an existing cloud infrastructure to a decentralized local-first infrastructure: How can existing cloud resources be used effectively without compromising on data protection and offline availability?