Cloud computing offers many advantages to researchers and engineers who need access to high performance computing facilities for solving particular compute-intensive and/or large-scale problems, but whose overall high performance computing (HPC) needs do not justify the acquisition and operation of dedicated HPC facilities. There are, however, a number of fundamental problems which must be addressed, such as the limitations imposed by accessibility,...

Big Data has been much in the news in recent years, and the advantages conferred by the collection and analysis of large datasets in fields such as marketing, medicine and finance have led to claims that almost any real world problem could be solved if sufficient data were available. This is of course a very simplistic view, and the usefulness of collecting, processing and storing large datasets must always be seen in terms of the communication, processing...