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Discovering the potential of cloud computing in accelerating the search for curing serious illnesses

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2013.12.012Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Cloud computing for high performance computing (HPC) is gaining momentum.

  • Organizations engaged in life science R & D could benefit from the cloud.

  • The cloud could prove to be key in the search for cures to serious illnesses.

Abstract

Derided, when it emerged in 2007 as a fad, cloud computing has proved to be a viable business model for remotely delivering IT services through the Web (and other media) on a pay-as-you-go basis. The flexibility of this emerging computing service has opened many possibilities for organizations. Drug companies and medical research centers are among those organizations that are likely to benefit from this new IT service model. As well as providing massive cost-savings, cloud computing could offer these organizations the opportunity to greatly enhance the efficiency of their operations. For cloud providers, this is a new field to expand their reach. The aim of this article is to explore this new development and the potential of cloud computing in contributing to the advancement of research in life science and explain why this IT service model (despite many of its problems) could be game-changer for companies engaged in this business.

Introduction

Cloud computing is an IT solution and a business model that uses advances in ICT technologies such as virtualization and grid computing to remotely deliver (on demand) a range of ICT services (e.g., business and development software, processing power, storage) through the Web and other media such as a network infrastructure. There are mainly three types of services that are provided by cloud computing: Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). SaaS involves the provision of software functionality (Google Apps is a good and popular example). IaaS provides a range of infrastructural services (e.g., processing power, storage, virtual servers). PaaS is a platform that enables access to development software and hosting options to developers of Web applications. Cloud computing represents a new business servitization model that is different from those described by servitization authors who saw a service as either a supplement to an existing physical product and/or a service that is based on a supplier using its skills and knowledge (i.e., its competences) to provide clients with a solution (see Baines et al., 2009, Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988, Vargo and Lusch, 2006, Vargo and Lusch, 2008). The cloud paradigm is different in the sense that a physical product (e.g., software and hardware) is transformed into a service.

Cloud computing is underpinned by two main technologies: virtualization and grid computing. Virtualization can be described as an approach for pooling and sharing technology resources to ensure greater efficiency of resources utilization. For example, virtualization can be used to take a single physical asset (e.g., server, storage device or network) and make it operate as if it were many separate, smaller assets. This process improves asset utilization and efficiency, and decreases costs by reducing the need for physical assets. Moreover, virtualization can also be used to combine multiple assets (e.g., storage devices and networks) and present them to servers and applications as if they were a single, larger asset; which simplifies server and application architecture and reduces costs (Sultan & Salim, 2010).

Grid computing is the technology that involves the use of software to combine the computational power of many different (and possibly geographically dispersed) computers, connected in a grid (hence the name “grid computing”) in order to provide enhanced computer processing power. Grid computing also uses software that can divide and farm out pieces of a program to as many as several thousand computers. Grid technology, therefore, can be thought of as the technology that enables the establishment of network-distributed parallel processing and distributed and large-scale cluster computing.

Section snippets

The cloud and high performance computing

It is interesting to note that cloud computing for high performance computing (HPC) has not been on the priority list of many cloud providers. Until recently, HPC has not been a good candidate for cloud computing due to a number of factors such as its requirement for tight integration between server nodes via low-latency interconnects and high-speed networking (Shainer et al., 2010). For example, the performance overhead associated with host virtualization, a prerequisite technology for

Life science research and development (R and D)

Advances in personalized medicine hold immense potential for human health. The variation in human genetic make-up causes different responses to drugs in many people. This is often why drugs fail to treat many people as they are only suitable for a small proportion of the entire human population (i.e., those with the “right” genome for a particular drug). The genome is the entire hereditary information of an organism (such as a human). Deciphering an individual's genome is a process known as DNA

Coping with cloud concerns

The cloud IT service delivery model has the potential to benefit users in many respects. One of its most significant is its ability to free users from the expense associated with buying, installing and maintaining applications and hardware locally. The cloud model shifts much of this expense to a pay-as-you-go model and consequently offers significant cost advantages according to one view (Lin et al., 2009). Moreover, the cloud reduces power consumption. A great proportion of the costs of

Conclusion

Using cloud computing for HPC purposes was not, until recently, perceived (by either users or providers) as a viable option due to the performance overhead associated with the process of virtualization (one of the major technologies underpinning this new IT service). However, such technology-related issues have been overcome by developments in new hypervisors (the core technology of virtualization) as was demonstrated in this article. To highlight the growing popularity of cloud computing for

Dr. Nabil Ahmed Sultan is Acting Head of the School of Business, Leadership and Enterprise and Head of Division of Management, Business and Enterprise at University Campus Suffolk (Ipswich, UK). Prior to that he was Award Director of International MBA at Liverpool Hope University's Business School. He is also Visiting Professor at the Servant Leadership Centre for Research and Education (SERVUS) at Vrije University, Amsterdam (The Netherlands). Dr. Sultan has a colourful professional career and

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    Dr. Nabil Ahmed Sultan is Acting Head of the School of Business, Leadership and Enterprise and Head of Division of Management, Business and Enterprise at University Campus Suffolk (Ipswich, UK). Prior to that he was Award Director of International MBA at Liverpool Hope University's Business School. He is also Visiting Professor at the Servant Leadership Centre for Research and Education (SERVUS) at Vrije University, Amsterdam (The Netherlands). Dr. Sultan has a colourful professional career and research background. He spent his early working years in the Arab Gulf region and later headed a UK business. He also worked for the UNDP in Aden and New York before moving into academia in the late 1990s working initially at the University of Liverpool. He has a research interest in information management, cloud computing, leadership, ethics and the socio-economic development in the Arabian Peninsula.

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