As more organizations move their IT, data management, and data analysis needs to the Cloud, I often have to answer these questions:
- Can Stata run in the Cloud?
- Am I allowed to run my copy of Stata in the Cloud?
- What is the best setup for Stata in the Cloud?
- How does Stata perform in the Cloud?
Before I answer these questions, let’s define what cloud computing is. Wikipedia defines cloud computing as the following:
“Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user. The term is generally used to describe data centers available to many users over the Internet.”
The main reason I see our users use cloud computing is so they can easily add more computing resources (memory and cores) to projects they are working on to speed up development and analytics. What’s nice about cloud services is that they provide an easy way to add resources on demand. Basically, you pay for hardware resources only when you need them, which saves time and money and allows you to scale different projects accordingly.