CACAO-2025

Cloud platforms offer powerful tools for scientific research but often come with added complexity. To manage this, researchers use infrastructure-as-code (IaC) or domain-specific recipes that simplify cloud deployment. These tools help streamline setup, but they have limitations in fully supporting scientific workflows.

 CACAO (Cloud Automation and Continuous Analysis Orchestration) addresses these challenges as an open-source, cloud-native platform that helps users deploy software and infrastructure across multiple clouds. 

 launch

Cacao Solutions

• Support open science and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles
• Expand access to cloud resources for research and education
• Encourage collaboration among research software engineers, scientists, and educators
• Promote the sharing of best practices for building and reusing cloud infrastructure recipes

By focusing on getting stuff done, CACAO helps transform research and education in a multi-cloud world. CACAO is built and maintained by CyVerse, the NSF research project that created Atmosphere.

Key Features

Customize the Cloud 

• CACAO tailors cloud computing to your workflow. Behind the scenes, it uses powerful recipes built with Terraform, Ansible, or Kubernetes, but you don’t need to be an expert. Chances are, the community has already created a recipe you can use.

Expanding to More Platforms


• Support for Google Cloud (GCP), Microsoft Azure, and non-Terraform-based workflows (like Nextflow) making CACAO even more versatile.

Smart, Automated Workflows


• With Continuous Analysis features, CACAO will:
• Automatically activate cloud resources when your data or workflow changes.
• Clean up by shutting resources down once your analysis finishes.