Communications of the ACM
Cloud Services Satisfy a Higher Calling
Credit: Ralph Langner
The Internet2 NET+ project recently announced the addition of 16 cloud services to its NET+ program, which is aimed at reducing the barriers to research.
"The ability to have any researcher, any student, anywhere at any institution and instantly use services together is a very powerful opportunity," says Internet2 NET+'s Shel Waggener. The expanded NET+ offering enables Internet members to add the services they want to their core membership.
The strategy is to take offerings that were designed for the commercial sector and tailor them for higher education while keeping costs down, which can result in custom-tuned services designed to meet the community's needs. Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft are all major contributors to the new Internet2 service offering.
Compliance and security are top priorities for the project and the vendors. In addition, the Federal Information Security Management Act affects researchers working with government grant projects that require this level of compliance from a data handling perspective. "The worst thing we could do is invest hundreds of millions in capital in any of our institutions and then have them utilized at less than 100 percent," Waggener says.
From HPC in the Cloud
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