Letting researchers focus on research

Aim: an easy-to-use, scalable environment for analysing complex data. Standard tools such as Hadoop and Apache Spark are integrated, so researchers do not need to spend time installing and configuring them. In addition, students can learn how to deal with big data analysis tools in this environment (see box).

Aim: a service for storing large quantities of data. This goes together with Big Data Analysis and provides a place for researchers to store their data sets and make them available to others.

Aim: a self-service environment that provides a digital home for researchers’, professors’ and students’ projects, e.g. a a simple website, an archive for project documents or a shared means of working on program code. Popular programming languages such as Python and R are supported.

Aim: to complement the existing infrastructure, SWITCHengines resources are used to increase redundancy. Virtual machines can be integrated into the campus network, and internal services can be accessed easily behind the firewall (see also "Virtual machines for central IT").

Aim: feasibility study and documentation of best practices for this next-generation technology following widespread virtualisation in the cloud. This makes it possible to use infrastructures more efficiently and to provide and operate services in an agile manner

Aim: feasibility study for a marketplace for academic cloud services from the academic community. This will help researchers and teaching staff to find or post offers easily.

Aim: a generic framework for reporting access and billing services offered via the marketplace. In a next step, tools that make it easy to move and back up virtual machines (VMs) will be produced. Moving locally produced VMs to the cloud will thus be a simple task.

Aim: best practice documentation for the practical use of cloud infrastructure for research and teaching. The findings will flow into existing and future services across the whole SCALE-UP project.

Aim: To make the statistical analysis software that is popular among academics available on SWITCHengines. Procuring commercial software for cloud services is a challenge, which is why this work package has also produced its own process and operating model.