Adopting new computer and infrastructure technologies in the drug discovery and development community only makes sense if it results in better and faster scientific research. IT buzz words are often overwhelming scientists without translating these great technology innovations into viable scientific solutions.

Life Sciences research is becoming increasingly collaborative and complex, leveraging multiple technologies to get a systems level understanding of diseases and organisms. This exponential increase in the scale of data being generated combined with increased collaboration has resulted in a need to rethink how data is cost effectively stored, analysed and shared among teams. Cloud computing is a combination of technologies and service offerings and has the potential to increase the speed of basic research projects significantly. Gartner, a leading information technology research and advisory company, predicts that the worldwide market for cloud services will grow from $58.6 billion in 2009 to $148.8 billion by 2014. What are the benefits, negatives and opportunities of the use of cloud computing?........