The Discovery Cloud: Accelerating and Democratizing Research on a Global Scale

Modern science and engineering require increasingly sophisticated information technology ( IT) for data analysis, simulation, and related tasks. Yet the small to medium laboratories (SMLs) in which the majority of research advances occur increasingly lack the human and financial capital needed to acquire and operate such IT. New methods are needed to provide all researchers with access to state-of-the-art scientific capabilities, regardless of their location and budget. Industry has demonstrated the value of cloud-hosted software-and platform-as-a-service approaches; small businesses that outsource their IT to third-party providers slash costs and accelerate innovation. However, few business cloud services are transferable to science. We thus propose the Discovery Cloud, an ecosystem of new, community-produced services to which SMLs can outsource common activities, from data management and analysis to collaboration and experiment automation. We explain the need for a Discovery Platform to streamline the creation and operation of new and interoperable services, and a Discovery Exchange to facilitate the use and sustainability of Discovery Cloud services. We report on our experiences building early elements of the Discovery Platform in the form of Globus services, and on the experiences of those who have applied those services in innovative applications.