Every year, the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) invites guests from industry and academia to a collaborative scientific workshop on the topic Operating the Cloud. Our goal is to provide a forum for the exchange of knowledge and experience between industry and academia. Co-located with the event is the HPI’s Future SOC Lab day, which offers an additional attractive and conducive environment for scientific and industry related discussions. Operating the Cloud aims to be a platform for productive interactions of innovative ideas, visions, and upcoming technologies in the field of cloud operation and administration.

In these proceedings, the results of the fifth HPI cloud symposium Operating the Cloud 2017 are published. We thank the authors for exciting presentations and insights into their current work and research. Moreover, we look forward to more interesting submissions for the upcoming symposium in 2018.