Microsoft, National Science Foundation Announce Cloud Computing Partnership

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today an agreement with Microsoft to provide scientists and researchers free access to Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing platform.

For three years, the NSF will be able to tag research projects that would benefit from access to advanced cloud computing services. Such projects would typically present significant computational challenges and involve large amounts of data.

"The goal of this agreement is to provide the broad science and engineering communities to leverage highly scalable cloud computing services, especially for data-intensive applications, said Jeannette Wing, assistant director for Computer & Information Science & Engineering for NSF. "The cloud as a research platform is still an underexplored territory. With the Windows Azure platform we challenge the research community to develop new algorithms, languages and programming models for computing on the architectural paradigm -- a highly reliable, networked cluster of machines that give the illusion of unlimited resources."

The selected projects will be funded and managed by the NSF while Microsoft provides researchers with Azure access and a Microsoft support team to help researchers get the most out of the on-demand computation and scalability Azure makes available

"Cloud computing can transform how research is conducted, accelerating scientific exploration, discovery and results," said Dan Reed, corporate vice president of Technology Strategy and Policy and eXtreme Computing at Microsoft. "These grants will also help researchers explore rich and diverse multidisciplinary data on a large scale."

The agreement stems from recognition by both the NSF and Microsoft that scientists and engineers are increasingly overburdened by massive amounts of data. It is hoped that with the arrangement researchers will be able to glean new insight from large and complex data sets.

"We've entered a new era of science -- one based on data-driven exploration -- and each new generation of computing technology, such as cloud computing, creates unprecedented opportunities for discovery," said Wing. "We are working with Microsoft to provide the academic community a novel cloud computing service with which to experiment and explore, with the grander goal of advancing the frontiers of science and engineering as we tackle societal grand challenges."