The software maker has started grafting popular scientific databases and analysis tools onto its Windows Azure cloud computing service. This basically means that researchers in various fields can get access to a fast supercomputer of their very own and pose queries to enormous data sets that Microsoft keeps up to date. For the time being, Microsoft will allow some research groups to perform their work free, while others will have to rent calculation time on Azure via a credit card.
These moves have turned Somsak Phattarasukol, a graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle, into a big fan of Microsoft.
Mr. Phattarasukol, like many researchers, is accustomed to waiting in line for access to large, public computers and to twiddling his thumbs – sometimes for days – as the machines work on his requests. It’s a frustrating process only made worse as the databases the researchers deal with swell alongside the time it takes to perform the analysis.
Microsoft officially opened access to the scientific bits of Azure this week, but Mr. Phattarasukol got early access to the system. He’s part of a team that’s trying to create a biofuel from bacteria that produce hydrogen gas. The work has required the research team to compare the makeup of various bacterium strains against an extensive protein database, as they try to figure out which bits of genetic code can prompt higher hydrogen gas production.
“We can do this now in hours instead of days,” Mr. Phattarasukol said, in reference to the Azure system.
The scope of his group’s work had proved too taxing for the search and analysis system maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), which makes protein databases available. Now, Mr. Phattarasukol does the same work on Microsoft’s Azure system, which has acquired the N.C.B.I. databases.
“Everyone is trying to use N.C.B.I., and it’s just too much work for them to take care of everyone’s requests,” Mr. Phattarasukol said.
Microsoft’s decision to provide these types of services to researchers reflects its long-standing interest in supporting leading-edge science and also a desire to make its software more popular with researchers. Linux has become the standard software that runs on large groups of computers used for the toughest research jobs. Microsoft also got a late start with its cloud computing service and could use some help making people aware of what it has to offer.
Dan Reed, the vice president for technology strategy and policy and extreme computing at Microsoft, portrayed the scientific bent of Azure as a means of opening serious computing power to “the excluded middle” of researchers that can’t afford their own supercomputing systems.
Microsoft also wants to create strong ties between desktop applications – like Excel and other specialized scientific software – and Azure, so that scientists can simply click a button and fire off a complex query rather than needing to developing their own programming skills to pull this off, as often happens today.
“I have seen a whole generation of researchers turned into system administrators by the demands of computing,” Mr. Reed said.
Microsoft plans to keep its science services tools and some database access free for the next year and then re-evaluate the situation.
“We wanted to take one variable and pain point out of the equation,” Mr. Reed said. “The idea was to work together, build the tools that we think will empower researchers and see what happens.”
Researchers can work with Microsoft under special programs and receive gratis access to Azure for their calculations as well, although people not covered by such programs will have to pay for computing time on Azure. Mr. Phattarasukol’s weekend of hammering away at a protein database, for example, would have cost $140 based on the rates Microsoft currently charges business customers using Azure.
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