RESEARCH
Crunching Big Data With Big Clouds
The cloud's impact in the scientific world is on the rise: How researchers can use distributed computation to solve big data problems and collaborate in new ways.
Truth is in the numbers, but often hidden somewhere deep down: "Some refer to data as the fourth paradigm of science because the sheer amount of data available and the new technologies and techniques for working with it are fundamentally changing how scientists go about their research" (Quote: GigaOm)
Using the power of distributed storage and computing resources for science is increasingly common. Additionally cloud concepts open up new ways for collaboration in science. Here are some examples of new approaches and platforms.
Searching for answers with some fun
One example is Kaggle witch received major funding in 2011. "Kaggle lets companies outsource their toughest number crunching jobs to data scientists and software developers by turning them into competitions", is how GigaOm describes what they do.
The idea of initiating a competition and involving a team to solve a specific problem is not new. However, the use of the cloud and its unlimited and on-demand resources makes it "possible to have many people access and work with the same data sets at the same time".
Other companies who are active in this field, offering cloud-based data-as-a-service are: Quantivo, 1010data, and Opera Solutions.
Using the power of distributed storage and computing resources for science is increasingly common. Additionally cloud concepts open up new ways for collaboration in science. Here are some examples of new approaches and platforms.
Searching for answers with some fun
One example is Kaggle witch received major funding in 2011. "Kaggle lets companies outsource their toughest number crunching jobs to data scientists and software developers by turning them into competitions", is how GigaOm describes what they do.
The idea of initiating a competition and involving a team to solve a specific problem is not new. However, the use of the cloud and its unlimited and on-demand resources makes it "possible to have many people access and work with the same data sets at the same time".
Other companies who are active in this field, offering cloud-based data-as-a-service are: Quantivo, 1010data, and Opera Solutions.
