Cloud-native technologies in research: challenges and opportunities

Cloud-native practices are becoming increasingly established among data providers and within the broader technology sector. In contrast, the adoption of cloud-native technologies by researchers as part of their everyday workflows remains more limited. This is the case despite the potential benefits these approaches could offer, for example in facilitating easier access to and sharing of research data. Contributing factors include the continued use of legacy software designed for traditional filesystems, which is often not well suited to cloud storage environments, as well as the types of infrastructure typically available to researchers, which are frequently more HPC-oriented. In this presentation, I will discuss these limitations and highlight the opportunities that cloud-native formats and technologies may offer for selected research projects.