Kenji Takeda, Microsoft

The public cloud is becoming increasingly useful and usable for research across all domains. Platforms such as Microsoft Azure provide on-demand, cost-effective, and highly scalable capabilities, including low-latency high performance computing and GPUs. As with any evolution of research computing, there are new skills, techniques, and knowledge that has to be mastered in order to take full advantage of new technologies and new ways of working. We will discuss, and are looking to better understand, what the research community needs from cloud providers to fill the skills gap, increase knowledge exchange, and ensure that everyone is able to take full advantage of the public cloud.