Scientific Cloud Computing - Present and Future

Over the past five years, cloud computing has gone from a curiosity to core scientific technology. The cloud's relative simplicity, instant availability, and reasonable cost have made it attractive to scientists, especially in domains relatively new to large scale data analysis. This trend will continue into the foreseeable future, challenging resource providers to adapt their services, to provide easy federation with other providers, and to accommodate many different scientific disciplines. For developers of cloud services, there are also many challenges. Efficient access to, and the curation of large data sets remain largely unsolved problems. Image management also raises new issues, especially if these images are to be shared and trusted.

This presentation reviews the current status of cloud computing and presents some ideas on how the upcoming challenges might be met.