Dear Colleagues,

I'm writing to you today to ask for your assistance in a very
important NSF-XSEDE effort. For those of you that do not know me,
my name is David Lifka and I am the Director of the Cornell
University Center for Advanced Computing and the Weill Cornell
Medical College Director of Research Computing. I also serve as
the coordinator for the XSEDE Architecture and Design team and it
is in that capacity that I'm writing to you today.

I've been asked by Dr. Barry Schneider of the National Science
Foundation and Dr. John Towns, Principal Investigator for the
XSEDE project, to collect information on how researchers are
using Cloud resources today in order to guide us on how best to
integrate Cloud resources into XSEDE in the future.

NSF and XSEDE management would like to hear directly from
researchers and educators on how they are using the Cloud, why
they are using the Cloud, and the advantages the Cloud provides
for their research. They especially want to hear from researchers
who are not currently XSEDE users.

We know that there are many compelling Cloud offerings (IaaS,
SaaS, PaaS, etc.) and that many of you have had great success
using these resources in innovative and exciting ways to forward
your research.

If you have had such a success, we strongly encourage you to fill
out a short online Cloud Use Survey at:

https://www.xsede.org/cloudsurvey

Your participation will help the NSF plan for the future Cloud
integration.

If you have any questions, concerns or ideas, I'd be happy to
speak with you. Just let me know (lifka@cac.cornell.edu) and we
can schedule a call.

On behalf of the NSF/XSEDE management team, thank you!

Sincerely,

David Lifka

David A. Lifka, PhD
Director - Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC)

Director Research Computing - Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC)
Adjunct Associate Professor - Cornell Computing and Information Science (CIS)

Cornell University

512 Frank H. T. Rhodes Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-3801
Office: 607-254-8621
Cell: 607-227-5517
Fax: 607-254-8888
Email: lifka@cac.cornell.edu
Web: www.cac.cornell.edu

Weill Cornell Medical College

1300 York Ave, LC-013
New York, NY 10021
Office: 646-962-3375
Cell: 607-227-5517
Email: dal2039@med.cornell.edu
Web: www.med.cornell.edu