Head in the clouds

That's certainly where my head has been for the last 2 weeks as I've been on holiday! A big thank you to Jason and Jens for keeping the blog ticking over whilst I've been away.

However the title doesn't just refer to holidays (even though that's what most people are thinking of at this time of year) but also cloud computing. When I was away JISC released 2 reports on Cloud for Research.

The first report is entitled "Using cloud computing for research" and aimed to

• document use cases for cloud computing in research for data storage and computing;
• develop guidance on the governance, legal and economic issues around using cloud services for storage and computing in academic research;
• make recommendations to JISC on possible further work in the area for data storage and computing.

The second report is entitled "Technical review of cloud computing for research" and focused on the following areas -

• the current status of cloud computing in research communities;
• state-of-the-art cloud technologies in academic, commercial, and industrial domains;
• technical guidance on the use, adoption and migration to cloud computing for research;
• recommendations for future technical and standardisation work to JISC.

The reports and the resulting recommendations make for some interesting reading.