Technical Review of Cloud Computing for Research
The project and the resulting report will focus on the following areas:
- the current status of cloud computing in research communities;
- state-of-the-art cloud technologies in academic, commercial, and industrial domains;
- technical guidance on the use, adoption and migration to cloud computing for research;
- recommendations for future technical and standardisation work to JISC.
The main goal of this project is to perform a technical review of using cloud computing for research. This technical review will involve extensive case studies to identify key technical challenges and intermediate cloud solutions, by identifying and recruiting experts and active researchers from research communities. These experts will include at least the National e-Science Centre (NeSC), JISC-CETIS, JANET UK, The National Grid Service (NGS), OMII-UK, and representative UK Higher Education (HE) institutions. State-of-the-art commercial and industrial cloud solutions, especially those that are relevant to identified challenges for research, will also be surveyed and evaluated in this project. This will be guided by a funded expert consultant group including leading vendors such as EUCALYPTUS and SAP; and research computing services and information services departments from representative HE institutions. Finally, the report will detail guidelines for researchers and resource providers considering adopting or migrating into cloud solutions; as well as recommendations on further standardisation and development.
The guidance notes for researchers and CISPs, technical report and final report are now available in the documents section below. Also available are briefs for the technical report, guidance for researchers and guidance for cloud infrastructure service providers (CISPs), which summarise what is in these reports.