RSEConUK 2019

In March, Microsoft (MS) hosted a summit for EMEA Research Software Engineers in Brussels. This talk will give an overview of discussions a feature of which was how MS see RSEs as a focal point for the adoption of cloud computing for research in Higher Education. Often sitting at the interface between researchers and IT, RSEs have knowledge of both domains, work with both and teach.
Identifying and addressing knowledge gaps is an area of interest for Microsoft and following a wide-ranging discussion on training in digital skills, several themes developed which the talk will discuss: Data; Authentication; Funding; Managing Budgets; Deployment; Culture.
A recurring theme was also to identify deliverables to harness the enthusiasm of the summit. These included the report this talk summarises and a white paper on data in the cloud, but the key deliverable was the Research Software Reactor (RSR). The first workshop takes place at the end of May 2019. Using MS resources: BluePrint, DevOps and Learn, focussed initially on Azure, RSR aims to develop Proof of Concept open source deployment and learning materials for research driven workloads (https://github.com/research-software-reactor/guidelines). The talk will update on progress!