I-Corps: Teams Project: iRODS-to-Market

This project plans to provide policy-driven data management for distributed collections. The technology developed through this effort supports data virtualization, affording a global view and controlled management and sharing of distributed data, across heterogeneous and cloud resources. As a data grid, it provides abstractions for data objects, resources, and users and manages access to underlying physical infrastructure. This technology also abstracts data management, separating policy implementation from physical storage; the technology's rules allow data managers to automate administrative services and to implement policies for replication, distribution, pre- and post-processing, metadata management, etc. - independently of the (local or remote) data storage system. This technology can be used for managing data distributed across the cloud.Scientific data collections represent intellectual capital from which future research and evidence-based decisions can be derived. As collections grow, demand increases for data sharing, data publication, and data preservation; these are all necessary to enable data-based scientific advancement when data volume is high and analysis is sophisticated. The technology developed through this project has already proven itself in scientific data management; it is widely used within national research projects and around the world in institutions whose crushing data needs compel them to seek new infrastructure technologies. The proposed project hopes to facilitate the build-out of custom environments and new deployments that implement complex data policy.This proposal is synergistic with many innovative business opportunities that will leverage big data. Harnessing opportunities and creating value for businesses, scientists, and government requires storing, managing, and analyzing high volumes and wide varieties of data. This project provides technology for doing that.