Cloudscape Brazil 2015. How business and research are innovating in the cloud
Some tangible dialogues for the Leishmaniasis Virtual Lab. The three user communities behind the EUBrazilCloudConnect project showcased their results on epidemiology, biodiversity, and medical informatics tools as well as plans to sustain these scientific applications after funding ends in early 2016. The team behind the Leishmaniasis Virtual Lab (LVL http://lvl.i3m.upv.es(opens in new window)) showcased the open, collaborative research environment for the molecular surveillance of Leishmania and their vectors to the Technical leishmaniasis Group of the Brazilian Department of Health. The interaction has led to further discussions on its potential wider deployment in Brazil. Hand in hand with (open source) industry. Cloudscape Brazil was the place to learn how companies of all sizes are acting as an innovation hub in the cloud and big data space. Both large companies like Microsoft and SERPRO, and small firms and spin-offs are just as smart when it comes to creating new business opportunities and jobs. Examples of innovative applications leveraging cloud and big data technologies were presented: the traffic prediction project, chemical engineering and mineral processing, the LiveOcean project and the cancer DNA sequences analysis, together with the opportunities for using the wide azure4research program. Six Brazilian SMEs moderated by Cedric Thomas of OW2 competed for the best pitch addressing IT solutions in the “XaaS” (Everything as a Service) world, i.e. storage, data analytics, VM selection, OS consulting, demonstrating that Brazil has a highly growing ICT economy and that a strong change towards open source activities is undergoing. The “perfect” pitch contest was won by Guilherme Maluf Balzana, director of Anolis IT; a company which aims to create a secure, resilient and available Software Defined Storage (SDS) service for academic researchers. Unity as a common strength. Another exciting feature of Cloudscape Brazil was the session on new EU-Brazil collaborative project starting in early January 2016. SECURECLOUD, EUBra-BIGSEA, EUBrasilCloudForum, HPC4E and Futebol presented their ambitious plans to advance cloud, HPC, and future Internet technologies through a collaborative research environment across Europe and Brazil. They all share the common goals of knowledge transfer and sustainability to ensure return on investment. The EUBrasilCloudForum will be organising Cloudscape Brazil 2016 and 2017, offering all the EU-Brazil collaborative projects a chance for a progress check, emphasising impacts on markets. These future workshops will be the place for networking, helping to meet the common policy goal of the European Commission and the Brazilian Ministry of Technology in terms of high level co-operation and fruitful synergies between all these initiatives. Federation is the way forward. A very active debate among Francisco Brasileiro, Full Professor, Federal University of Campina Grande, Yannick Legré, Managing Director at EGI.eu Daniele Lezzi, Senior Researcher at Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, BSC, Michel Drescher, Oxford University & CloudWATCH project, and Leandro Guimaraes, Service division, RNP, moderated by Renato Cerqueira, Senior Research Manager, Natural Resources Solutions, IBM Research Brazil, highlighted several challenges around network, data format and security when federating cloud resources across regions that future cross-regional cloud federated projects will need to address. EUBrazilCloudConnect & EGI shared their experience of implementing interoperability at infrastructure, platform and application layer. In terms of Cloud Standards the event highlighted the growing importance of TOSCA and the need to include it in the future interoperability plugfests.
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Brazil