Finally, we strongly believe that this year's conference continued the tra- tions of having a high scienti?c and technical quality as well as an extensive dialogue on key issues of service availability. May 2008 Fumihiro Maruyama Andras ' Pataricza Organization ISAS 2008 was sponsored by the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST), University of Tokyo and Service Availability Forum, in cooperation with IEICE TC on Dependable Computing and GI TC on Depe- ability and Fault Tolerance. Organizing Committee General Chair Takashi Nanya (University of Tokyo, Japan) Program Co-chairs Andras ' Pataricza(BudapestUniversityofTechnologyandEconomics,Hungary) Fumihiro Maruyama (Fujitsu Lab. , Japan) Finance Chair H. Nakamura (University of Tokyo, Japan) Local Arrangement Chair M. Imai (University of Tokyo, Japan) Registration Chair M. Kondo (University of Tokyo, Japan) Publicity Chair M. Reitenspiess (Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Germany) Publication Chair M. Malek (Humboldt University, Germany) Web Master H. Okamura (Hiroshima University, Japan) Steering Committee M. Reitenspiess (Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Germany) S. Benlarbi (Alcatel, Canada) T. Dohi (Hiroshima University, Japan) M. Malek (Humboldt University, Germany) D. Penkler (HP, France) F. Tam (Nokia, Finland) X Organization ProgramCommittee A. Avritzer (Siemens, USA) D. Bakken (Washington S. , USA) R. Baldoni (University of Rome, Italy) G. Chockler (IBM, Israel) C. Fetzer (TU Dresden, Germany) F. Fraikin (SDM, Germany) R. Fricks (Motorola, USA) M. Funabashi (Hitachi, Japan) A. Gokhale (Vanderbilt, USA) K. Hidaka (IBM, Japan) M. Hiller (Volvo, Sweden) H. Ichikawa (UEC, Japan) K. Iwasaki (Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan) Z. Kalbarczyk (UIUC, USA) T.

It is always a special honor to chair the European Dependable Computing C- ference (EDCC). EDCC has become one of the well-established conferences in the ?eld of dependability in the European research area. Budapest was selected as the host of this conference due to its traditions in organizing international scienti?c events and its traditional role of serving as a meeting point between East and West. EDCC-5 was the ?fth in the series of these high-quality scienti?c conf- ences. In addition to the overall signi?cance of such a pan-European event, this year's conference was a special one due to historic reasons. The roots of EDCC date back to the moment when the Iron Curtain fell. Originally, two groups of scientists from di?erent European countries in Western and Eastern Europe - who were active in research and education related to dependability created a - joint forum in order to merge their communities as early as in 1989. This trend has continued up to today. This year's conference was the ?rst one where the overwhelming majority of the research groups belong to the family of European nations united in the European Union. During the past 16 years we observed that the same roots in all the professional, cultural and scienti?c senses led to a seamless integration of these research communities previously separated ar- ?cially for a long time. EDCC has become one of the main European platforms to exchange new - searchideasinthe?eldofdependability.

The idea of creating the European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC) was born at the moment when the Iron Curtain fell. A group of enthusiasts, who were pre viously involved in research and teaching in the ?eld of fault tolerant computing in different European countries, agreed that there is no longer any point in keeping pre viously independent activities apart and created a steering committee which took the responsibility for preparing the EDCC calendar and appointing the chairs for the in dividual conferences. There is no single European or global professional organization that took over the responsibility for this conference, but there are three national in terest groups that sent delegates to the steering committee and support its activities, especially by promoting the conference materials. As can be seen from these materi als, they are the SEE Working Group "Dependable Computing" (which is a successor organizationof AFCET)in France, theGI/ITG/GMATechnicalCommitteeonDepend ability and Fault Tolerance in Germany, and the AICA Working Group "Dependability of Computer Systems" in Italy. In addition, committees of several global professional organizations, such as IEEE and IFIP, support this conference. Prague has been selected as a conference venue for several reasons. It is an easily accessible location that may attract many visitors by its beauty and that has a tradition in organizing international events of this kind (one of the last FTSD conferences took place here).