Department of Energy announces $32-million grant to study cloud computing benefits for scientific re

It has become clear that cloud computing can offer cost-saving and performance-enhancing benefits to businesses in the private sector as well as agencies in the government sector.

But this week, the Department of Energy is betting $32 million that cloud computing will benefit the scientific community as well.

Funded through the America's Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the grant will be split between Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to support research that determines the feasibility and benefits of using cloud computing to accelerate scientific discoveries.

Cloud computing is expected to reduce costs and energy consumption for scientific research by permitting scientists to scale up larger science projects, scale down smaller projects, and configure the computing environment as needed.

"Cloud computing has the potential to accelerate discoveries and enhance collaborations in everything from optimizing energy storage to analyzing data from climate research, while conserving energy and lowering operational costs," said Pete Beckman, director of Argonne's leadership computing facility and project lead. "We know that the model works well for business applications, and we are working to make it equally effective for science."

Another ARRA-funded cloud computing research grant was awarded to a Duke University professor earlier this week to investigate the potential role of cloud computing servers in social networking data storage.

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