[Bio-Linux] Cloud computing

[Dan Swan]

Hi everyone,

> This is the 4th or 5th time cloud computing has come to my attention in the past months, so of interest and happy to hear more thoughts about it - it is on the cusp of becoming a reality for some people.

Working out where it is in the Gartner hype cycle is important :)

I think the thing about AWS/EC2 is that they are already thinking
about the scientific applications - Microsoft certainly so.

Did you know AWS already offers access to scientific datasets?:

http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/

The 'point' of the cloud is not to replace the racks of machines at
your local institution, although that may be a side effect - it is to
offer scalable, burstable disk/compute/whatever as and when you need
it on a 'pay per view' model.

I think what has happened is people have seen how horrendous the Grid
situation has become, and how far it has deviated from its own 'plug
in and play' mantra for access to computing resources, mired as it is
in certificates, middleware and authentication hell - and the cloud
has been borne from this.   It's a streamlined approach that offers
most of what people want without all the horribly complexity.

People whose requirements outstrip the cloud I suspect will be better
off served by existing Grid based provision.

Just my 0.02c of course :)

Dan

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