CloudLaunch: discover and launch pre-configured software for a variety of clouds

The Australian-made Genomics Virtual Laboratory keeps on producing outcomes for Melbourne Bioinformatics. Yesterday (10 May 2018) co-authors Enis Afgan (ex-VLSCI, now Johns Hopkins University), Andrew Lonie (Melbourne Bioinformatics), James Taylor (Johns Hopkins University) and Nuwan Goonasekera (Melbourne Bioinformatics) submitted this paper to Cornell University’s arXiv, which outlines how to launch complex applications (typical for bioinformatics) across various cloud providers:

CloudLaunch: Discover and Deploy Cloud Applications

Abstract:

Cloud computing is a common platform for delivering software to end users. However, the process of making complex-to-deploy applications available across different cloud providers requires isolated and uncoordinated application-specific solutions, often locking-in developers to a particular cloud provider. Here, we present the CloudLaunch application as a uniform platform for discovering and deploying applications for different cloud providers. CloudLaunch allows arbitrary applications to be added to a catalog with each application having its own customisable user interface and control over the launch process, while preserving cloud-agnosticism so that authors can easily make their applications available on multiple clouds with minimal effort. It then provides a uniform interface for launching available applications by end users across different cloud providers. Architecture details are presented along with examples of different deployable applications that highlight architectural features.

Link to paper here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.04005.pdf