Cloud computing in bioinformatics

Abstract

Cloud Computing presents a new approach to allow the development of dynamic, distributed and highly scalable software. For this purpose, Cloud Computing offers services, software and computing infrastructure independently through the network. To achieve a system that supports these characteristics, Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and agent frameworks exist which provide tools for developing distributed and multi-agent systems that can be used for the establishment of Cloud Computing environments. This paper presents a CISM@ (Cloud computing Integrated into Service-oriented Multi-Agent) architecture set on top of the platforms and frameworks by adding new layers for integrating a SOA and Cloud Computing approach and facilitating the distribution and management of functionalities. CISM@ has been applied to the real case study consisting of the analysis of microarray data and has allowed the efficient management of the allocation of resources to the different system agents. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.