The use of middleware to build dependable systems is a growing trend. Some dependable systems use group communication as their communication layer.
Group communication is a well-known solution for providing reliable and secure communication.
For more than a decade, researchers have developed group communication protocols to provide fault tolerance and increase system performance. Other dependable system developers have made the decision not to use group communication. The overall goal of this workshop is to understand the reasons for both choices by learning how group communication can help in the construction of dependable system middleware, and when it should and should not be used. The first goal of this workshop was to discuss group communication protocols from two different viewpoints. The workshop will address the state of the art in group communication and how researchers envision further group communication protocol research.