Community resource will leverage software-as-a-service to enhance the user experience for systems biology researchers.
Newswise — CHICAGO—April 4, 2013—Globus Online, the software-as-a-service for research data management, announces that KBase, the Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase, will use Globus Online for identity and group management.
KBase, launched earlier this year, offers a wide array of datasets and computational tools for predictive biology. KBase supports research into optimizing energy production and improving the environment by enabling the construction of models ranging from the genotypes of complex microbial and plant communities to their phenotypes.
“KBase is a big, ambitious project,” said Tom Brettin, KBase infrastructure team co-lead. “Globus Online enables us to outsource two significant parts of our infrastructure so we can focus on building new tools for researchers. It’s great to leverage the identity and group management functionality that Globus Online offers, and to give KBase users a simple and seamless experience from the start.”
The integration of Globus Online into KBase delivers on the promise of software-as-a- service (SaaS): that a site or application can leverage commodity services with minimal effort, while benefiting from the economies of scale that cloud hosted infrastructure offers. Globus Online’s rich web experience and robust application programing interfaces (APIs) were key factors in KBase’s decision and will be crucial to the success of the project. The integration is seamless—KBase users will not be aware that Globus underlies portions of the site because the team worked to match the KBase web site branding, ensuring a consistent experience.
“KBase expects to have thousands of users,” explains Rachana Ananthakrishnan, Globus Online senior engagement manager and solutions architect. “They need a straightforward way to manage these users and their access to KBase services and resources. Globus Online as a platform meets these requirement for the KBase project.”
Globus has worked with KBase since June 2012, when the KBase team learned of Globus Online’s solutions for research data management. The Globus identity platform offered exactly what KBase was looking for: account creation, linked and multiple accounts, and self-organized and administrator controlled groups. Globus allows KBase users to log into multiple KBase resources, all using a single identity.
Globus Online makes reliable transfer and sharing of big data as simple as a few clicks. This is enabled by underlying platform services that shield the researcher from the complexities of managing identities and group relationships spanning multiple institutions and security domains. The KBase scenario demonstrates how application developers and external service providers can access platform services to meet end user needs while simplifying their infrastructure.
About Globus OnlineGlobus Online is software-as-a-service for research data management, used by dozens of research institutions and high-performance computing facilities worldwide. Globus Online is an initiative by the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, and is supported in part by funding from the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. For more information, visit www.globusonline.org.
About KBaseThe Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) is an emerging software and data environment designed to enable researchers to collaboratively generate, test and share new hypotheses about gene and protein functions, perform large-scale analyses on a scalable computing infrastructure, and model interactions in microbes, plants, and their communities. KBase provides an open, extensible framework for secure sharing of data, tools, and scientific conclusions in predictive and systems biology. For more information, visit kbase.science.energy.gov.
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