University of Texas at Austin · CS Department

Cloud Application Platforms Lab

Design · Construction · Operation

The Cloud Application Platforms Lab (CAP Lab) focuses on the design, construction, and operation of cloud application platforms as first-class, programmable systems. Organizations today face a fundamental challenge: composing the many available cloud-native components into coherent, operable platforms tailored to specific applications. CAP Lab builds the systems, abstractions, and tools that make this possible.

Many of these problems are motivated by real-world deployment challenges encountered while supporting cloud-native applications across domains such as web services, AI workloads, geospatial systems, and distributed enterprise platforms, often in collaboration with industry partners. The lab develops and maintains open-source systems — including KubePlus and KubeProvenance — that serve as both research artifacts and platforms for student projects.

Students in the lab gain experience building real distributed systems, contributing to open-source communities, and working on problems grounded in industry practice.

01

Platform Abstractions & Composition

Declarative models and Kubernetes Operators for building application-specific platforms from composable open-source components.

02

Multi-Tenant Cloud Systems

Safe and efficient sharing of infrastructure across multiple applications and users, including resource isolation, allocation, and governance.

03

Platform Operations & Managed Services

Secure, accountable managed services with mechanisms for access control, provenance, policy enforcement, and AI-driven operational intelligence.

Research

Projects

Active

KubePlus — Multi-Instance Multi-Tenancy on Kubernetes

2020 – present  ·  734 GitHub stars

KubePlus is an open-source Kubernetes Operator that enables application-specific multi-instance multi-tenancy. It provisions isolated application instances per tenant and supports per-instance monitoring, license management, and upgrades.

The central idea is to model applications through custom API definitions on Kubernetes clusters while enabling isolation across compute, storage, and network resources. KubePlus has been adopted by engineering teams at Verizon Communications and Atomic Maps.

GitHub → KubeCon 2020 Talk Helm Summit 2019 Talk
Active

Platform-as-Code

2020 – present

Platform-as-Code is a novel approach for composing application-specific platforms from open-source components. It defines objective criteria for evaluating platform component readiness through the Operator Maturity Model, and provides declarative mechanisms for platform composition and application-specific workflows.

The broader goal is to move platform construction from an ad hoc engineering activity toward a more systematic and programmable discipline.

KubeCon 2020 — Being a Good Citizen of the Multi-Operator World
Active

KubeProvenance — Operational Provenance Tracking

2018 – present

KubeProvenance is a declarative model for tracking and querying provenance information about actions performed on Kubernetes APIs. It supports operational auditability and governance in managed service delivery workflows.

This work builds on earlier research in provenance for key-value systems (TaPP'13) and PaaS environments (HotCloud'15), and now informs current work on access control and operational auditability in cloud-native platforms.

GitHub →
Active

AI-Assisted Platform Operations

2024 – present

Investigating how AI systems — particularly local LLMs — can support platform operations including troubleshooting, root cause analysis, and Day-2 operational tasks, while preserving reliability, auditability, and human oversight.

This work is closely related to participation in the CNCF AI-Conformance Working Group, which examines how AI capabilities can be standardized in cloud-native environments.

Past

Provenance for PaaS & Key-Value Systems

2012 – 2015

Studied provenance in Platform-as-a-Service environments and key-value stores. Developed the Key-Value Provenance Model (KVPM) supporting both data-level and schema-level provenance, and proposed mechanisms for PaaS-level provenance collection.

HotCloud'15 TaPP'13
Scholarship

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Journals
2012
A Generative Programming Framework for Context-Aware CSCW Applications
Kulkarni, D., Ahmed, T., & Tripathi, A.
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), 21(2), 11:1–11:35
2010
A Framework for Programming Robust Context-Aware Applications
Kulkarni, D., & Tripathi, A.
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), 36(2), 184–197
2007
Autonomic Configuration and Recovery in a Mobile Agent-Based Distributed Event Monitoring System
Tripathi, A., Kulkarni, D., et al.
Software: Practice and Experience, 37(5), 493–522
2005
A Specification Model for Context-Based Collaborative Applications
Tripathi, A., Kulkarni, D., & Ahmed, T.
Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC), 1(1), 21–42
Peer-Reviewed Conferences
2009
Resource-Aware Migratory Services in Wide-Area Shared Computing Environments
Tripathi, A., Padhye, V., & Kulkarni, D.
IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS)
2008
Context-Aware Role-Based Access Control in Pervasive Computing Systems
Kulkarni, D., & Tripathi, A.
ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies (SACMAT), 113–122
2008
Application-Level Recovery Mechanisms for Context-Aware Pervasive Computing
Kulkarni, D., & Tripathi, A.
IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS), 13–22
2002
Dynamic Network Information Collection for Distributed Scientific Application Adaptation
Kulkarni, D., & Sosonkina, M.
International Conference on High Performance Computing (HiPC), 555–563
2002
A Framework for Integrating Network Information into Distributed Iterative Solution of Sparse Linear Systems
Kulkarni, D., & Sosonkina, M.
VECPAR, 436–450
Workshops & Posters
2015
Provenance Issues in the Platform-as-a-Service Model of Cloud Computing
Kulkarni, D.
USENIX HotCloud'15, Santa Clara, CA
2013
A Provenance Model for Key-Value Systems
Kulkarni, D.
USENIX TaPP'13, Lombard, IL
2013
A Fine-Grained Access Control Model for Key-Value Systems poster
Kulkarni, D.
ACM CODASPY, San Antonio, TX
2006
Exception Handling in CSCW Applications in Pervasive Computing Environment
Tripathi, A., Kulkarni, D., & Ahmed, T.
Advanced Topics in Exception Handling Techniques, Springer LNCS 4119
2004
Context-Based Secure Resource Access in Pervasive Computing Environments
Tripathi, A. R., Ahmed, T., Kulkarni, D., et al.
PerCom Workshops, 159–163
Peer-Reviewed Industry Conference Presentations
2020
Being a Good Citizen of the Multi-Operator World
Kulkarni, D.
KubeCon North America, Cloud Native Computing Foundation
2019
Operators and Helm: It Takes Two to Tango
Kulkarni, D.
Helm Summit, Cloud Native Computing Foundation
2016
Application CI/CD on OpenStack – Building a Solution Using Jenkins and OpenStack Solum
Kulkarni, D., & Jain, A.
OpenStack Design Summit, Austin, TX
Lab Members

People

Devdatta Kulkarni
Devdatta Kulkarni
Lab Director, Assistant Professor of Instruction, CS
Researcher, educator, and technologist with expertise in cloud-native computing, multi-tenancy, and distributed systems provenance. Founder of CloudARK and lead developer of KubePlus. Active contributor to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
devdatta@cs.utexas.edu GitHub CloudARK

Current Students

Harshith Sadhu
Undergraduate Research
AI-enabled managed service delivery on Kubernetes
Spring 2026 – ongoing
Annie Hu
Undergraduate Research
Access control in managed services for cloud-native applications
Spring 2026
Bryan Zhao
Undergraduate Research
Support for GitOps in multi-instance managed services framework
Spring 2026

Alumni

Pranav Venkatesh
Scaling Kubernetes with LLMs: AI-Assisted DevOps Techniques (MS)
2025
Tony Nguyen
Application-specific metrics for multi-tenant cloud-native applications
2025
Om Goswami
Application upgrades in multi-instance multi-tenancy; KubePlus CLI plugin
2024
Yizhou Li
CLI plugins for provider/consumer permissions in KubePlus
2023
Emil Arslan
Improved API registration mechanisms in KubePlus
2023
Daniel Moore
Provenance tracking for CRUD operations on custom resource types in Kubernetes
2018
Mohamad N El-Zein
Evaluation of Operator development frameworks (Operator SDK vs. Kubebuilder)
2018
Collaborations

Partners

Industry Partners

CloudARK
Industry — Founding Collaboration
CloudARK is a managed service delivery platform for cloud-native applications on Kubernetes, founded by the lab director. Research insights from CAP Lab directly inform CloudARK's platform development, and real-world operational challenges encountered at CloudARK motivate key research questions in multi-tenancy and managed service delivery.
Verizon Communications
Industry — Deployment Partner
Engineering teams at Verizon Communications have adopted KubePlus as part of their application-specific platform deployments, providing real-world validation and feedback that informs ongoing research in multi-tenant platform design.
Atomic Maps
Industry — Deployment Partner
Atomic Maps uses KubePlus for application-specific platform deployments, contributing to the lab's understanding of operational challenges in geospatial and data-intensive cloud-native workloads.

Open-Source & Community

Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)
Open-Source Community
Active participation in the CNCF Kubernetes Multi-tenancy Working Group, contributing to discussions on multi-tenant cloud platform design and the Kubernetes multi-tenancy manifesto. Also participating in the CNCF AI-Conformance Working Group, examining how AI capabilities can be standardized in cloud-native environments.
OpenStack Community
Open-Source Community
Prior role as Project Team Lead (PTL) for OpenStack Solum, the open-source Platform-as-a-Service initiative within the OpenStack ecosystem. Contributions include CI/CD pipeline design and Platform-as-a-Service abstractions that continue to inform current research directions.