Friday, February 27, 2015

UTSA Gets $9M For Cloud Computing Institute

The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) has received $9M in an investment to create a new, Open Cloud Institute, focused on creating degree programs around cloud computing and big data, the school said Thursday afternoon. According to UTSA, the effort is being funded by a total of $9M in initial gifts and in-kind investments, with donations from Rackspace, AMD, Intel, Mellanox Technologies, Seagate, and the Open Compute Project and the OpenStack Foundation. $4.8M of the funding, from the 80/20 Foundation, will go towards four endowed professorships, up to two faculty research positions, 10 graduate student endowments and research funding. The 80/20 Foundation is chaired by Graham Weston, who also is the chairman of Rackspace. Rackspace--which is based in San Antonio-- has been a key contributor to the OpenStack effort, and is a major provider of cloud computing services.