F e B R uA RY 2 0 1 2 | Vo L. 5 5 | N o. 2 | c oM M u n i c aT i o n s o f T he ac M 81in performing them for terabyte or larger datasets (increasingly common across scientific disciplines) are quite different from those that applied when data volumes were measured in kilobytes. The result is a computational crisis in many laboratories and a growing need for far more powerful data-management tools, yet the typical researcher lacks the resources and expertise to operate these tools.The answer may be to deliver research data-management capabilities to users as hosted "software as a service," or SaaS, 18 a software-delivery model in which software is hosted centrally and accessed by users using a thin client (such as a Web browser) over the Internet. As demonstrated in many business and consumer tools, SaaS leverages intuitive Web 2.0 in-a S B i g D ata emerges as a force in science, 2,3 so, too, do new, onerous tasks for researchers. Data from specialized instrumentation, numerical simulations, and downstream manipulations must be collected, indexed, archived, shared, replicated, and analyzed. These tasks are not new, but the complexities involved software as a service for Data scientists The costs of research data life-cycle management are growing dramatically as data becomes larger and more complex.saas approaches are a promising solution, outsourcing time-consuming research data management tasks to third-party services.Globus online demonstrates the potential of saas for research data management, simplifying data movement for researchers and research facilities alike.

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A foundational need in high-performance computing is to move large (multi-gigabyte and even terabyte) datasets between sites. Simple file transfer mechanisms such as FTP and SCP are not sufficient from either a reliability or performance perspective. GridFTP is the de facto standard protocol for transferring large data files in production Grid/HPC environments. GridFTP extends the standard FTP protocol to provide a high-performance, secure, reliable data transfer protocol optimized for high-bandwidth wide-area networks. The Globus GridFTP implementation has become the preeminent highperformance data transfer tool for the Grid community, with large facilities and projects using it to transfer billions of files per year. We report here on a new product, Globus Connect Multi User (GCMU), that greatly streamlines Globus GridFTP installation and configuration. GCMU packages a GridFTP server, MyProxy Online Certificate Authority, and other components in a manner that avoids the need for any end-user or system administrator involvement in security configuration or credential management. We describe the GCMU design and a GridFTP protocol extension that simplifies transfers across security domains. We also explain how GCMU interacts with the Globus Online software-as-a-service solution. By enabling "instant GridFTP," this work makes the powerful Globus GridFTP tool accessible to nonexpert users and to smaller laboratories and projects.