Dear Julia community, We are proud to announce the very first release of *CloudArray.jl* <https://github.com/gsd-ufal/CloudArray.jl>, a programming support that eases big data programming in the cloud. CloudArray loads data from files and books the right amount of virtual machines (VMs) able to process it. Data loading and VM management are entirely automatic and performed on-demand.
CloudArray builds on top of Julia DistributedArrays. Indeed, a CloudArray is a DistributedArray whose data and VM managements are automatic: data load, resource booking and allocation. Therefore, existent codes that use DistributedArrays don't need to be adapted in order to use CloudArray: just use CloudArray and configure your cloud authentication settings. If you are interested in CloudArray, please *try it for free at our Azure VMs <http://cloudarraybox.cloudapp.net>*. If you need any help, you can write to this list or send me an e-mail (prof.alage at gmail.com) that we'll be glad to help you in developing your distributed application in the cloud with CloudArray. CloudArray and CloudArrayBox are research prototypes which intend to be a contribution to DistributedArrays and JuliaBox, not a replacement of them at all. We intend in the future to pull requests to JuliaBox and Julia Parallel communities as CloudArray code evolves. We also would like to thank Julia developers and community for the great work. It's amazing how Julia puts together high-level programming and efficiency, Julia really inspired us in designing and implementing CloudArray. Moreover, we are open to work with Julia community, so please fell free to propose any improvements or to pull requests to CloudArray code. CloudArray roadmap <https://github.com/gsd-ufal/CloudArray.jl#future-features> includes interesting features such as: support for Amazon EC2, OpenStack; allow to set a price threshold; provide different QoS (SLA). We are looking forward to getting feedback from you. Sincerely, André Lage. Ph.D. in Computer Science https://sites.google.com/a/ic.ufal.br/andrelage/home/cv
