Cloud Computing

Can Scientific Data be Free?

Jerry Sheehan — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:55:15 -0800

Description

With a good deal of scientific fanfare, Google announced last January a new beta program (Google Research Datasets-GRD) to provide free terabytes worth of storage for scientific data. This service was initiated to address

a scientific need for a robust freely available infrastructure that can be used to share the immense amounts of data being created by modern scientific exploration in disciplines as wide ranging as biology and physics. Initial GRD data sets included the 120 terabyte Hubble Space Telescope data and digital images from the text Archimedes Palimpsest.[1]

Less then a year later, with a weakening economy swinging the ax, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced the company would be cutting back on experimental projects and GRD came to an untimely end. As of December 2008, GRD had over 30 datasets uploaded, all of which now have approximately 1 month to find alternate hosting sites before Google pulls the plug.[2]

The scientific community is deeply disappointed in Google's move. Life scientists have argued that it is another sign that Google isn't interested in helping them on an infrastructure level while Astronomers are hoping they will reconsider their decision as the economic situation improves.[3] But, the bottom line is Google didn't see a business case here and decided to close down the experiment.

Google's decision in in sharp contrast to that taken by one of their up and coming competitors, Amazon. While many may think of Amazon as only the world's largest on-line bookstore, within the last three years they have become a major information infrastructure provider through products such as their Amazon's Web Services (AWS) and Elastic Compute Cloud. Just last Thursday, the company announced that they will be hosting massive amounts of public data including the annotated human genome, US Census data, and 3D renderings of molecules. [4]

The catch? While Amazon is hosting the data for free they will charge users for downloading the data or for any use of it for derivative computation. As they explains, "Previously, large data sets such as the mapping of the Human Genome and the US Census data required hours or days to locate, download, customize, and analyze. Now, anyone can access these data sets from their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances and start computing on the data within minutes. Users can also leverage the entire AWS ecosystem and easily collaborate with other AWS users. For example, users can produce or use prebuilt server images with tools and applications to analyze the data sets. By hosting this important and useful data with cost-efficient services such as Amazon EC2, AWS hopes to provide researchers across a variety of disciplines and industries with tools to enable more innovation, more quickly."[5]

The death of GRD and the rise of the Amazon Web Services for public scientific data is important because it yet another signal that Amazon, not Google, may be the major player in experimentation with cloud computing services and data storage for scientific research.

Science in the United States

Source

[1]"Google to Host Terabytes of Open-Source Science Data", Alexis Madrigal, Wired Science, Jan 18, 2008, http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/google-to-provi.html

[2]"Failure to Launch: Google Research Datasets", Clinton Boulton, Google Watch, December 19, 2008, Google Watch - Failure to Launch - Failure to Launch: Google Research Datasets

[3]"Google Shutters Its Science Data Service", Alexis Madrigal, Wired Science, December 18, 2008, http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/googlescienceda.html

[4]"Amazon Hosting, Crunching Massive Public Databases", Aaron Rowe, Wired Science, December 5, 2008, http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/massive-amounts.html?referer=sphere_related_content

[5] "Public Data Sets on AWS Now Available", Amazon Web Services What's New, http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2008/12/03/public-data-sets-on-aws-now-available/

Chrome and Gears: The Web Gets a New Engine

Jerry Sheehan — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:09:45 -0700

Description

The primary technology used by individuals to access the Web, the Web Browser, has not undergone substantial transformation since the creation of the first browser (Mosaic) by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in 1992. At that time, the web was primarily a document repository without the rich media types, interactivity, or proliferation of social information that is the foundation of our Web 2.0 ecosystem. While browsers have certainly improved in speed and features, the underlying document-centric mindset has dominated the browser paradigm.

Last week Google announced the release of their first browser, code named Chrome. Chrome takes a very different approach to the Web, one that is built not only on the current foundation of web technologies, but is built in recognition of the importance of javascript to the modern web experience and the emergence of web applications as a way of working. In this sense, one of the most important components of Chrome may well be the extension of Google Gears and an embrace of cloud computing. Google has a great illustrated "comic book" that explains some of the underlying philosophy and technologies used in Chrome.[1]

The first version of Chrome is a windows-only application but ports to other operating systems are under active development. Importantly, all of the underlying source code for the browser has been made open source and is available for the worldwide network of software developers to hack, improve, and test. Within the first day of its availability on the Web, Chrome had risen to being 1.7% of the global browser market.

What might be the underlying impact of Chrome:

1) A Substantial New Software Project for Google: Clearly Chrome is a cornerstone of the web experience that Google wants to develop and exploit. The highest levels of Google have publicly stated that this is a major project and Google's creators being on hand for the software announcement and confirm this fact.

2) Wither Mozilla? Google has been a primary supporter of Mozilla and was a critical ally in the fight to keep the browser viable when its market share was being attacked by Microsoft's Internet Explorer. While Google still talks the Mozilla talk, it is clear to most analyst that Chrome poses a threat to Mozilla. This will come about in likely one of two ways: 1) Google will likely explicitly decrease their support of Mozilla as they make a greater resource investment in Chrome. It is questionable who will step into the void left. 2) Since the Chrome code base is open source the legions of mozilla developers may begin to invest their time on Chrome as opposed to continued work on the Mozilla code-base. This attention deficit could decrease new releases effectively killing the browser in the uber-comeptitive mindshare battle.[4]

[3] The Mobile Browser Battle Will Heat Up: Chrome is likely part of a multi-platform campaign by Google with an increasing emphasis on the mobile device needs. The Google investment in Android provides a hardware platform on which Chrome may be optimized, and from the discussion of the motivation for Chrome by Google, they both use the same underlying software architecture (webkit). This common starting point will allow Google to place significant pressure, if they choose, on other mobile software providers. [5] This is a critical battleground. Remember that while today's Web is built around desktop personal computers the future is a billion mobile devices accessing global information.

[4] It's About the Gears, Stupid: It would be a mistake to look at the Google effort as being primarily about an effort to win the browser wars dominated by Internet Explorer (72.15% of global use).6 Instead, Chrome is likely focused in large part on trying to spread the adoption of Google Gears. Gears is Google's approach to distributed "cloud based" applications. Imagine a world in which Google provides not your browser, but your mail, your word processor, your spreadsheet, your contacts, and your slides.[4]

Computer & Information Science

Source

[1]http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html
[2]"A week of Chrome: Google's browser gets 7% share at Ars", Ryan Paul, Published: September 10, 2008, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080910-aweek-of-chrome-googles-browser-gets-7-share-at-ars.html
[3]"Google brings out big guns in support of Chrome",Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service, MacWorld, September 2, 2008, http://www.macworld.com/article/135341/2008/09/chrome.html
[4] "The Importance of Chrome", Alex Russel, September 1, 2008, http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/2008/09/the-importance-of-chrome/
[5] "How Chrome Puts the Skids under Nokia", Twm Davies, The Register, September 5, 2008, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/05/chrome_mobile_analysis/
[6]Market Share by Net Applications, http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0

New software and services for mobile devices that mimic PC desktop features

jorgemata — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:50:15 -0700

Description

Press release with lots of punctuation errors. Excerpts:

IBM today announced new software and services for mobile devices that closely mimic desktop features formerly found only on the PC. Designed for both business users and consumers, the new offerings can help individuals make better business decisions faster, while connecting friends, work colleagues and teams beyond what has been available in the PC era.

According to a recent report from IBM's Institute for Business Value, the number of mobile Internet users worldwide is projected to approach 1 billion, a 191 percent increase from 2006 and a compound annual growth rate of 24 percent. Also, 67 percent of all workers today use mobile and wireless computing.

[...]

Using a combination of the new software and services, employees and executives on the go can have an instant view of how their business is performing, either at a company-wide or a very detailed business process level, depending on the person’s role within the enterprise. Using collaboration software, that information can then be shared across a team and action can be taken, all using a mobile device.

For example, the vice president of a major retailer can use a mobile device to get a real-time view of the company’s sales and corresponding inventory in a simple, single-screen graphic. A salesperson for the same company can view the current status for a specific customer or supplier. Both employees can exchange data and make buying or selling decisions on the go. The information provided on the person’s mobile device is based on parameters established by the employee using easy to use, drag and drop tools.

Combined with business event processing software from IBM, companies can identify patterns and establish connections between events and then initiate a trigger when a trend emerges. A business event represents a slice of time, down to the millisecond, and could be something like a stock trade or online purchase. The role of event processing is becoming increasingly important because it enables companies of all sizes and industries to analyze and respond to minute market changes based on information being collected from millions of mobile devices.

To keep up with this exploding demand for new and more powerful mobile applications, IBM is taking advantage of recent advances in cloud computing, a paradigm in which tasks are assigned to a combination of connections, software and services accessed over a network. Using any type of device like an iPhone, BlackBerry or laptop, users can reach into the cloud for resources as they need them. Cloud computing allows users and companies to pay for and use the services and storage that they need, when they need them and, as wireless broadband connection options grow, where they need them.

"The mobile Web presents one of the largest emerging market opportunities we've seen in a decade as billions of people look to access a wide range of services both for business and personal use," said Drew Clark, director of strategy, IBM Venture Capital Group. "Utilizing software assets from IBM Research combined with our services offerings provides unique opportunities to help companies quickly adapt to the mobile environment."

[...]

The new software has been created based on IBM's extensive research and investment in the development of mobile web products and services. IBM's India Research Lab where the markets are much more mature than the and other geographies. In addition, 40 percent of specializes in mobile web research and the new software has been developed through collaboration with IBM mobile web experts in China, India and JapanUnited StatesIBM's workforce is mobile and has provided a strong testing ground for mobile web projects.

Full text at [1].

Source

IBM Helps People Stay Connected With New Software And Mobile Devices. Aug 08, 2008. http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24854.wss

Re: Andrew Walkingshaw's "The cloud" - on-demand distributed computing power

jorgemata — Sun, 11 May 2008 06:24:14 -0700

Description

Besides Amazon.com Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2), as noted by Andrew Walkingshaw, [1] a Forrester report lists these commercial cloud computing companies/services [2]:

. Akamai - Application Peformance Services (http://www.akamai.com/html/solutions/index.html)
. Areti Internet - Virtual Hosting (http://www.areti.net/services/virtual-hosting.html)
. Enki - Computing Utility (http://www.enkiconsulting.net/computing-utility/)
. Fortress ITX (http://joyent.com/accelerator)
. Joyent - Accelerator for Applications (http://joyent.com/accelerator)
. Layered Technology - Grid Layer (http://www.layeredtech.com/hosting-solutions/virtual-grid-utility-computing.php)
. Salesforce.com (http://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2008/01/080117-2.jsp)
. Terremark - Infinistructure (http://www.terremark.com/technology-platform/infinistructure.aspx)
. XCalibre - FlexiScale (http://www.flexiscale.com/)

Among companies that offer entire clouds are IBM, Dell, and Sun Microsystems. Gartner comments on IBM's cloud in [3].

Future of chemistry

Source

[1] Andrew Walkingshaw: "The cloud" - on-demand distributed computing power. Science X2. May 10, 2008. http://sciencex2.org/en/node/17836

[2] TechJunkie: More About Cloud Computing. March 12, 2008. http://www.computer-schools.org/hardware/getting-to-understand-more-about-cloud-computing

[3] David W. Cearley & Tom Austin: IBM Moves Toward a 'Cloud Computing' Infrastructure. Gartner, Nov 20, 2007. http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=548520&ref=g_sitelink

"The cloud" - on-demand distributed computing power

Andrew Walkingshaw — Sat, 10 May 2008 16:25:00 -0700

Description

Simulation scientists are mostly limited by both the number, and the speed, of the computers available to them. Really large simulations need really serious computer resources, but simulations like that are pretty rare; so the resources for them have been concentrated in regional grids or national centres like the UK's HPCx.

Economically this makes a lot of sense, but there's a lot of overhead; for instance, compute time has to be bid for long in advance of when it might actually be used. In that light, commodity on-demand computing services like Amazon's EC2 begin to look promising as an alternative; they have even greater economies of scale than the national infrastructure services, can provide a scientist with more CPU power at essentially no notice, and often provide more flexibility in choice of operating system and software than a centrally-provided system can. At the moment, they don't scale to the massively parallel calculations that the national supercomputers specialize in, but sooner or later they'll be competitive even for those cases.

Computer & Information Science

Source

http://www.grid-support.ac.uk/content/view/239/157/
http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2