The MELODIC platform will enable data-intensive applications to run within defined security, cost, and performance boundaries seamlessly on geographically distributed and federated cloud infrastructures. MELODIC will thereby realise the potential of heterogeneous cloud environments for big data and data-intensive applications by transparently taking advantage of distinct characteristics of available private and public clouds, dynamically optimise resource utilisation, consider data locality, conform to the user’s privacy needs and service requirements, and counter vendor lock-in. Hence, the main objective of the MELODIC project is to enable data-aware application deployments on geographically distributed and federated cloud infrastructures.