SaaS for Science: Leveraging Commercial Successes in Academia

May 17, 2016 at 3:00 PM CDT
  • Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile

Ian will be presenting in the Applied Research, Scholarship and Applications track at this year's Internet2 Global Summit.

Abstract: The business benefits of SaaS are well documented, among them: faster time to market for new products, access to advanced capabilities without in-house infrastructure, greatly reduced IT operating costs, and rapid development of high-value applications. Companies large and small are realizing these benefits and transforming their business, in contrast to the research community whose infrastructure seems stuck in the last century. While many may argue that industry and academia are very different - and hence require very different tools - there are strong parallels in both sectors that suggest researchers in all disciplines can realize similar benefits by adopting SaaS. For example, automation of the many routine and repetitive tasks in research workflows can be outsourced to SaaS providers at greatly reduced cost (due to scale economies that cannot be achieved by in-house deployments), with increased efficiency (due to the ease-of-use of SaaS solutions), and greater reproducibility (due to the codification of workflows that ensure continuity as research teams evolve). Foster will describe these and other areas where SaaS can transform research. He will survey available and emerging technologies, and discuss how they are being leveraged by early adopters to streamline research workflows and accelerate discovery.