The recent agreement between Microsoft and NSF (National Science Foundation) is sure to usher in an era of rapid progress in scientific research. Presently many researchers access resources at the National Computing Facilities or National Laboratories.
One thing that needs to improve is that the Azure System is built and targetted for businesses primarily. To cater to science, the Azure cloud may have to open up for more applications to the level available at the present resource centers. With the instant availability of resources, and if resource provisioning is guaranteed with required security then Azure Cloud may even be utilized for placing whole National Laboratories' computing needs on the cloud including those needed for automation "End points".
Of course organizations such as NERSC themselves are thinking of setting up "Research Clouds", even so Azure System could interact with them if and when they materialize and share resources.
We need to sit and watch how this pans out. This is really great stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment