Grid and cloud computing have changed the IT landscape in the way we access and manage IT infrastructures. Both technologies provide easy-to-use and on-demand access to large-scale infrastructures. Grid and cloud computing are major research areas with strong involvement from both academia and industry. Although significant progress has been made in the design, deployment, operation and use of such infrastructures, many key research challenges remain to achieve the goal of user-friendly, efficient, and reliable grid and cloud infrastructures. Research issues cover many areas of computer science to address the fundamental capabilities and services that are required in a heterogeneous environment, such as adaptability, scalability, reliability and security, and to support applications as diverse as ubiquitous local services, enterprise-scale virtual organizations, and internet-scale distributed supercomputing. While there are several differences, grid and cloud computing are closely related in their research issues. Both areas will greatly benefit from interactions with the many related areas of computer science, making Euro-Par an excellent venue to present results and discuss issues.