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UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska to NRC Computer Science & Telecommunications Board: “Use the commercial cloud!”

Pages from CSTBUW CSE’s Ed Lazowska addresses the National Research Council Computer Science and Telecommunications Board’s “Committee on Future Directions for NSF Advanced Computing Infrastructure to Support US Science in 2017-2020.”

  • “We have a crazy obsession with buying shiny objects – the bigger and more expensive, the better!”
  • “We’re investing 9:1 in hardware over software – it ought to be the reverse!”
  • “We have a dogged resistance to utilizing commercial software, services, and systems. We purchase our own. We operate our own. We roll our own. Often with amateurs. Why?”
  • “Establish the use of commercial cloud services as the strong default for science at all scales. Every request to purchase computing equipment that won’t fit on a desktop should be rigorously justified. Invest in intellectual infrastructure, software infrastructure, and outsourced services, not big shiny objects.

Check out the slides here.