Metadata and clouds

Keith Jeffery (CSIRO)

CSIRO ICT

DATE: 2013-11-13
TIME: 14:00:00 - 15:00:00
LOCATION: CSIT #108, S206 Level 2 CSIRO
CONTACT: JavaScript must be enabled to display this email address.

ABSTRACT:
Research information is complex. It consists of data about research projects, researchers, organisations, funding and research outputs such as publications, patents and products. Increasingly research managers a" both in funding organisations and research institutions - wish to have such data to manage research and to evaluate research outputs, outcomes and impact. At the same time researchers use the data for their CV, bibliography and web pages, detect collaborators and competitors and to find relevant research outputs for their own work. The research information is thus used both as data and metadata and the European Union has produced a standard named CERIF. The research information can also be related to open government data and the EC-funded ENGAGE project has demonstrated how CERIF can be used to generate metadata for open government sites such as DC, CKAN and eGMS.

However, metadata is not just about data. In the environment of GRIDs and now CLOUDs metadata can describe users, services (software processes) and resources (computing infrastructure) as well as data thus permitting virtualisation with middleware hiding the complexity from the end-user. The target is that the user neither knows nor cares where and how the computing is done as long as the required quality and service levels are achieved. Recent work by the EC Expert Group on CLOUDs has identified key challenges highlighted by CLOUD computing although in fact most are long-standing computer science research opportunities.

BIO:
Keith Jeffery is now an independent consultant and past Director IT at STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory with 360,000 users, 1100 servers and 140 staff. Keith holds 3 honorary visiting professorships, is a Fellow of the Geological Society of London and the British Computer Society, is a Chartered Engineer and Chartered IT Professional and an Honorary Fellow of the Irish Computer Society. Keith is President of ERCIM, past President of euroCRIS, past Vice-President of the VLDB endowment, and serves on international expert groups, conference boards and assessment panels, including co-chairing current activities of the RDA Research Data Alliance. He has advised government on security and green computing and chaired the EC Expert Groups on GRIDs and on CLOUD Computing.