Guidance Notes for Cloud Infrastructure Service Provider

Provisioning and maintenance of research computing facilities is a core part of the IT strategies of High Education Institutions (HEIs). Existing research computing facilities may include HPC clusters, campus grid infrastructure, and virtualised computational resources, which have been widely employed to support research activities across different disciplines. Additionally, investment is increasingly required for hardware procurement and system maintenance. The recent success in the use of cloud in business has introduced a new model that can potentially be employed by HEIs to provide cost-effective research computing. Cloud computing, due to its commercial nature, is still new to research communities, and a number of questions arise about its applicability to the HEI sector. Would cloud computing be appropriate if adopted for research? What are the differences between a research cloud and a commercial cloud? How could HEIs adopt cloud computing for research? This document provides guidance notes to potential cloud infrastructure service providers and helps identify the issues involved in adopting cloud computing for research activities in this early stage of development of the field