Providers Play Partners for Science!

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Indiana University and Penguin Computing, today announced a partnership to offer US researchers access to powerful shared computing resources in a secure environment. This type of servicealso known as on-demand or cloud computinglets individuals and organizations share the resources of large computing systems without individually purchasing and maintaining the costly equipment.

One downside of traditional cloud services is that users often do not know where or how shared equipment is kept, which may create security and grant compliance concerns. The new service provided by IU and Penguin mitigates these concerns by providing access to a group of computers owned by Penguin and housed on US soil in IUs highly secure state-of-the-art data center.

"This public/private collaboration demonstrates how technology companies are working together with academia to foster cost-effective innovation and provide access to world-class systems," said Charles Wuischpard, president and CEO of Penguin Computing. "The systems we provide are set up for ease-of-use with the same configurations as existing government supercomputers and helps address the challenge of providing the science and research community with easy cost-effective access to needed compute resources. We believe this specialized cloud computing model will help accelerate needed research to enable U.S. competitiveness in science and engineering."

The agreement between IU and Penguin also has the support of a group of founding user-partners including the University of Virginia; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Michigan. Along with IU, these partners will be the initial users of the new service. Thereafter, researchers at US institutions of higher education and federally funded research centers can purchase computing time from Penguin, and receive access via high-speed national research networks operated by IU.

"This is a great example of a community cloud service," said Brad Wheeler, vice president for information technology and CIO at Indiana University. "By working together in a productive private-public partnership, we can achieve cost savings through larger scale while also ensuring security and managing the terms of service in the interests of researchers."

Security and technical expertise provided by IU are critical to the collaboration. The cluster will be located in the IU Data Center, an energy-efficient facility built to withstand a category 5 tornado, with around-the-clock security provided by the IU GlobalNOC.

"This partnership is being executed in ways that aid IUs mission of engagement in the state and nation,offering our researchers secure access to on-demand computing and protecting valuable intellectual property,"said Craig Stewart, associate dean of research technologies and executive director of the IU Pervasive Technology Institute.

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