TCD researchers collaborate on international project to integrate cloud computing with grid technologies

Trinity College researchers based at the School of Computer Science and Statistics in collaboration with five European partners have attracted funding worth €2.3million to develop a new Internet-based software project called StratusLab which aims to enhance distributed computing infrastructures that allow research and higher education institutes from around the world to pool computing resources.  The two-year project, which was launched in Paris recently (14th June 2010) will see the TCD team, headed up by Senior Lecturer in Computer Science Dr Brian Coghlan, lead the effort to develop a repository of virtual appliances that will be used to simplify the set up of ‘grid’ systems thereby facilitating their growth and availability for researchers.

Funded through European Framework Programme 7 (EU-FP7), the two year project aims to successfully integrate ‘cloud computing’ technologies into ‘grid’ infrastructures. Grids link computers and data that are scattered across the globe to work together for common goals, whilst cloud computing makes software platforms or virtual servers available as a service over the Internet, usually on a commercial basis, and provides a way for organisations to access computing capacity without investing directly in new infrastructure. Behind cloud services are data centres that typically house large numbers of processors and vast data storage systems. Linking grid and cloud technologies will result in major benefits for European academic research and is part of the European Commission strategy to develop European computing infrastructures.