Coast to Coast Seminar Series - Globus Online: Research data management as a service.

Abstract

Large and diverse data result in challenging data management problems that researchers and facilities are often ill-equipped to handle. I propose a new approach to these problems based on the outsourcing of research data management tasks to software-as-a-service providers. I argue that this approach can both achieve significant economies of scale and accelerate discovery by allowing researchers to focus on research rather than mundane information technology tasks. I present early results with the approach in the Globus Online data movement, synchronization, and sharing service. I describe our experiences applying Globus Online to supercomputer and experimental facility data management, and outline future work aimed at incorporating data cataloging and analysis capabilities into the framework.