Red Hat Awarded NSF Grant for Developing the Open Cloud Testbed

In a recent announcement by Red Hat Inc., a team of collaborative researchers from Boston University, Northeastern University, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Red Hat Inc. has been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Computer and Network Systems for the development of a national cloud testbed called the Open Cloud Testbed. This testbed would help in the development and research of new cloud computing platforms.

This project is particularly important for researchers in academia as well as the industry focusing their study on computer systems and related sciences. Achieving the goal of this project would enable new cloud technologies to be more efficient and available to a wider community. Implementing open-source technologies on cloud enhanced programmable hardware like the FPGAs would increase the collaboration between the academic and open source communities.

The National Science Foundation’s Division of Computer and Network Systems is a part of the independent federal agency that supports research in the field of new computing and networking technologies.

Additionally, this grant would further extend the long-standing collaboration between Boston University and Red Hat. Orran Krieger, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University as well as the Co-Director of the Red Hat Collaboratory and the Mass Open Cloud stated, “An important part of the MOC has always been to enable cloud computing research by the academic community. This project dramatically expands our ability to support researchers both by providing much richer capabilities and by expanding from a regional to a national community of researchers.”