NASA Cloud Storefront to Offer Scientists Range of Services

NASA is working on a cloud "storefront" that will give the agency’s scientists and engineers access to the computing resources and services they require regardless of their IT environment. NASA Goddard’s computing environment ranges from desktops to high-performance computers, and the challenge for NASA officials is how to fit cloud computing into this range of environments, according to Adrian Gardner, CIO of NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center.

Desktop computers, mobile devices, virtualized data centers and high-end supercomputers all have a range of attributes that drive how users make decisions about their compute requirements. “One of things we started to talk about [at NASA] was a notion of an integrated management interface with cloud services and compute services, in general; in other words a storefront,” Gardner said...