Oct 1, 2010 10:47 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft and the National Institute of Informatics (NII) of Japan are working on a joint program on cloud computing research which will ensure university researchers a free access to advanced cloud computing resources, the two organizations announced yesterday.

The researchers part of this program are also members of the “New IT Infrastructure for the Information-Explosion Era” project, also known as the Info-Plosion Project, supported by NII.

This project focuses on the creation and development of new technologies which will allow the efficiency and security of information retrieval; in other words, the scientists will have the opportunity of exploring the potential of cloud computing, but they will also have to invent secure information systems that will improve the user's online experience.

This goal suits the values to which Microsoft aspires, so the company will donate considerable Windows Azure cloud resources to the project, through its global cloud research engagement project.

Windows Azure can provide on-demand compute and storage, and scale and management of Web applications on the Internet, thanks to its Microsoft datacenters.

Microsoft researchers and developers will adapt the platform and add a set of tools, apps and data that can be shared with academia, and also make their expertise in science, research and cloud computing available to them.

Dan Reed, corporate vice president, Technology Strategy and Policy and director of the eXtreme Computing at Microsoft, said that “cloud computing can transform how research is conducted, accelerating scientific exploration, discovery and results.

“These grants will also help researchers explore rich and diverse multidisciplinary data sets on a large scale.”

The Microsoft project aims to use cloud computing in research, by allowing researchers to have access to simple and powerful tools, that can be used to combine and analyze data.

All this came from the fact that today, data rules the world, and scientists work with sensors on collaborative data projects, and once the PC, Web and mobile apps will be easy to use through cloud services and also very powerful, the researchers will have wider capabilities, faster collaborations and scientific discoveries.

Dr. Masao Sakauchi, director general at the National Institute of Informatics, said, that “it is essential that future academic research should form strong ‘symbiotic-style’ relationships with other academic areas.

“Cloud computing is a powerful tool that allows researchers to collaborate and share computing resources and research results necessary for this type of collaborative research.

“I appreciate that Microsoft has given us a valuable opportunity to prove this vision.”