The European Space Agency has conducted in 2011 a research and development study at the European Space Agency, ESA, to analyse how Cloud Computing paradigm can best be utilised to address some of the challenges of modern ground data systems, such as increased distribution, increased demand on computing resources, increasing effort required for maintenance and deployment of an ever growing number of operational software and infrastructure baselines, increased demand on software flexibility in terms of fast adoption of evolving operational requirements, increased complexity of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) management, increased expectation on reduced time-to-the-market along with continuous emphasis on reducing the development, maintenance and operation costs of ground data systems. The objectives of the study have been: Identification of candidate ground data systems for each Cloud Computing service-provisioning model. For this purpose an analytic tool has been developed which utilises a set of metrics for systematic evaluation of the so-called "cloudability" level of the analysed applications; Assessment of suitability of different Cloud deployment models, i.e. private clouds, public clouds or hybrid clouds for each identified application domain; Analysis of how and to what extent the private Cloud Computing paradigm can address the security requirements of ground data systems; Evaluation of open source and commercial off-the-shelf Cloud provisioning solutions for establishing a private Cloud; Definition of a roadmap for evolution of the existing virtualized environment at the ESA European Space Operations Centre towards a private Cloud, including the identification of the required changes to existing business processes and the relationship between different organisational units within the Agency; The study has been successfully concluded in 2011 with the results of the assessment analysis and a Proof of Concept (PoC) demonstrator of the envisaged private Cloud for ground data systems. Our paper elaborates on the results of the study and devises how the existing ground data systems can benefit from Cloud Computing at infrastructure, platform and application level.
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