e-Science Central is a cloud platform developed at Newcastle University to help researchers and students access cloud computing resources through a web browser without needing specialized IT skills. It provides data storage, analysis services, workflow tools, and other features to support multidisciplinary research projects and teaching. The platform handles scalability, security, and other complex aspects of cloud computing so users can focus on their work instead of infrastructure management. It aims to make cloud advantages available to more domains by providing an easy-to-use interface and insulating users from vendor lock-in.

1. e-Science Central: A Cloud Platform for Research and Teaching Paul Watson School of Computing Science Director, Informatics Institute Newcastle University, UK Paul.Watson@ncl.ac.uk With thanks to: - The team: Hugo Hiden, Simon Woodman, David Leahy, Jacek Cala, Joanna Berry - Funders: RCUK Digital Economy, EPSRC, OneNE, Microsoft External Research, Newcastle Science City

2. Motivation Background in multidisciplinary research 30 projects (£30M in research funding) NE Regional e-Science Centre & SiDE Digital Economy Hub collaborative (universities and industry) Often working with researchers with little access to IT skills & resources Can Clouds help?

4. Approximate costs for a small size center (1000 servers) and a larger, 100K server center.Each data center is 11.5 times the size of a football field

5. Typical Prices CPU $0.10 /hour Storage $0.10 /GB month External Data Transfer $0.10 /GB

6. The Promise of Clouds Reduce IT capital expenditure “CapExOpEx” Sustainability Scalability….

7. Good Workload Patterns for Clouds(with acknowledgements to Dianne O’Brien) Compute Compute Time Time Bursting Fast Growth Research new data to be processed new algorithm to run Teaching term-based usage application/data with growing popularity

9. bespoke

10. on-going management costs

11. lock-inRealising cloud advantages is beyond most who could benefit App 1 App n .... Cloud Infrastructure: Storage & Compute

12. e-Science Central Approach  App 1 App n .... Cloud Platform App 1 App n .... Cloud Infrastructure: Storage & Compute Cloud Infrastructure: Storage & Compute

13. Key Requirements All through Web Browser Data(experimental data, instruments, sensors...)

14. .... App App Analysis Services e-Science Central App API Security Provenance/ Audit Social Networking Cloud Platform Workflow Enactment Metadata Processing Cloud Infrastructure Storage

20. Supporting Teaching Students just need Web Browser anytime, anywhere, any device” learning Teachers can set up exercises data, services, workflows and remotely review students work….

22. Supporting Tech Transfer supports industry collaboration can restrict access to specific content until IP deal agreed e.g. SimMarTec predicts how weather patterns will affect a ship’s progress

24. + scalability, dependability, security & audit

25. insulates users from cloud vendor lock-incan deploy on intranet as well as public cloud