Globus Publication: A New Approach

July 24, 2019   |  Rachana Ananthakrishnan

After careful consideration, we have decided to discontinue the data publication functions of the Globus service. This action only affects data publication functions—it does not affect core Globus services, such as file transfer, data sharing, and the management console, in any way.

We first announced this decision in February 2019 to customers affected by the decision, and we have worked with them to transition their data and metadata to other systems, prior to our discontinuing the service on September 30, 2019.

We also discussed our rationale for this decision with attendees at the GlobusWorld 2019 conference:

  • Globus data publication functions were tightly coupled and not easily customizable to address the specific needs of most customers.
  • Extensions to data publication functions could only be made by the Globus product team, which is heavily overutilized.
  • In the almost four years since we made data publication functionally available, it has been adopted by very few institutions; and even within those institutions, usage has been minimal (for the reasons above).
  • A recent decision by Oracle to charge customers for use of the Java Runtime Environment means that Globus would need to invest in substantial refactoring of the existing code, which is not feasible given our current levels of funding.

Future plans for supporting data publication​

We are exploring other approaches to support customers that require data publication functionality. As a first step, we are decomposing the underlying components into independent services that may be used by our professional services team to build custom data publication solutions for customers. For example, these services could be used to create advanced data portals, including a custom, self-hosted publication service, if desired.

Over the long-term—and as described during the GlobusWorld 2019 keynote address—we are working on a broader platform that customers can use to create data flows for their specific use cases. 

If you are interested in engaging our professional services team to build a custom solution, or would like to discuss our future plans in this area, please contact us.