Investigating the Features of Research Environments on Cloud Computing

Given the increasing growth of technology especially in information technology and the existence of some obstacles such as geographical distribution, restrictions on the provision of resources and cost, researchers need an infrastructure to they can implement all the research related issues from idea to implementation and testing. The paper intends to introduce the appropriate platforms for solving these problems based on using cloud computing. Cloud computing is changing higher education and academic researchers to manage research faster and more cost-effectively than ever before. Cloud also provides real-time access to a broad set of tools, languages, and frameworks and direct access to virtually unlimited computing resources. Some cloud platforms such as AWS and Microsoft Azure provide research service along with business activities but some others are purely research. Introducing the services of each these environments and comparing between them base on unique comparative parameters such as VM migration support, custom image support, image library, auto scaling, network connectivity, storage choices, regional support and virtualization software hypervisor, express the goal of this paper.