Welcome Message from Workshop Organizers

In its second occurrence the ASHEs workshop has generated a wide range of interest and attracted quality contributions from researchers from different parts of the world. The scope of the topics covered in the selected papers has confirmed the importance of adaptivity as an overarching concept in the design of distributed systems. Its role in guiding and shaping the structure and behaviour of heterogeneous systems is becoming more evident. The different perspectives that emerge from the research are lending greater currency to the role of the ASHEs workshop as a forum for the presentation and discussion of innovative solutions in heterogeneous environments. The topics covered in the various contributions span a range of research interests where adaptivity is called upon to resolve conflicting requirements, enhance behaviour or optimise service and resource management. From the P2P requirements for the storage and retrieval of dynamic data to the use of redundancy to enhance robustness in autonomic systems, a common thread of adaptivity manifests itself at different levels. Issues related to context awareness and optimal behaviour have been brought to the fore and addressed convincingly. While context information has been investigated as a means of assisting the adaptive collaboration between groups of users, another research strand has identified the optimisation of job scheduling and data analysis as its main focus.