Big Data Research | News

MIT, Notre Dame, UT San Antonio Help Build Hybrid Cloud Environment for Education

• By David Nagel
• 11/21/13

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Notre Dame are collaborating with Internet2 and Rackspace Hosting to build a new OpenStack-optimized hybrid cloud environment designed to help the research and education community use the cloud for big data research. The new service is expected to be available to other institutions in spring 2014.

According to Internet2, the service will enable universities to connect their private clouds to the Rackspace public cloud using Internet2's secure high-performance network. Researchers will then be able to use regional, national, and global research and education networks to create OpenStack-powered hybrid clouds for the purpose of conducting research faster and on a broader scale.

Internet2 is an advanced technology community of research and educational institutions in the United States, and OpenStack is open-source software for building private and public clouds. The new service will be part of Internet2's NET+ program, which "provides access to a portfolio of 'above the network' cloud-based services," according to Internet2.

“This NET+ service fills an important need for the Internet2 community and our regional and global partners who can use the extreme performance of the Internet2 network combined with the open architecture of OpenStack to eliminate the need for very large data sets to travel over the public Internet,” said Shelton Waggener, senior vice president of Internet2, in a prepared statement. “Researchers and the higher education instructional community will be able to use Rackspace public cloud and OpenStack-based private cloud environments hosted at an Internet2 university where bandwidth is managed and high-speed delivery ensured, with minimal delay or latency.”

Further information about the OpenStack-based hybrid cloud environment for research and education can be found at internet2.edu.

About the Author

David Nagel is editorial director of 1105 Media's Education Technology Group and editor-in-chief of THE Journal and STEAM Universe. A 25-year publishing veteran, Nagel has led or contributed to dozens of technology, art and business publications.

He can be reached at dnagel@1105media.com. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at or follow him on Twitter at @THEJournalDave (K-12) or @CampusTechDave (higher education).