Built upon Parabon's Frontier Grid Platform, which manages some of the largest computational Grids, the new Modelling and Simulation as a Service (M&SaaS) solution will provide web-based Platform as a Service tools. These tools - such as a browser-based source code editor, online collaboration utilities, and virtualized build and runtime environment management interfaces - will allow developers to more efficiently create and modify a wide variety of high-performance computing (HPC) applications. In addition, the web-centric nature of the project will allow researchers around the world to work together seamlessly, removing barriers that have heretofore hampered scientific collaboration, dramatically increasing productivity for NASA and other organisations.

"M&SaaS has the potential to revolutionize how scientific software is designed, developed, deployed and used. By fully exploiting the service paradigm, Parabon's solution will eliminate many of the obstacles that currently challenge the modelling and simulation community", stated Mike Seablom, who leads the Software Integration & Visualization Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "The fact that this solution is accessible from the browser means anyone anywhere will be able to help contribute to our understanding of Earth system science."

Use of modelling and simulation is pervasive at NASA, as many of the space agency's research projects don't lend themselves to direct experimentation. For example, climatologists rely heavily on atmospheric models to assess the far-reaching consequences of greenhouse gas emissions; space-mission programmes use simulation extensively to orchestrate mission plans, engineer flight systems and conduct contingency planning exercises; and space-science programmes model cosmological phenomena to answer humankind's most profound questions about time and space. Outside of NASA, the list of applicable domains for M&SaaS is practically limitless. Engineers across a wide variety of sectors - including defense, finance and pharmaceutical research, among others - will benefit from the increased productivity provided by Parabon's solution.