Advanced modeling and simulation has enabled the design of a variety of innovative products and the analysis of numerous complex phenomenon. However, significant barriers exist to widespread adoption of these tools. In particular, advanced modeling and simulation: (1) is considered complex to use, (2) needs in-house expertise, and (3) requires high capital costs. In this paper, we describe the development of an end-to-end, advanced modeling and simulation cloud platform that encapsulates best practices for scientific computing in the cloud, and demonstrate using Hydra-TH as a prototypical application. As an alternative to traditional advanced modeling and simulation workflows, our Web-based approach simplifies the processes, decreases the need for in-house computational science and engineering experts, and lowers the capital investments. In addition to providing significantly improved, intuitive software, the environment offers reproducible workflows where the full lifecycle of data from input to final analyzed results can be saved, shared, and even published.

Extreme scale scientific simulations are leading a charge to exascale computation, and data analytics runs the risk of being a bottleneck to scientific discovery. Due to power and I/O constraints, we expect in situ visualization and analysis will be a critical component of these workflows. Options for extreme scale data analysis are often presented as a stark contrast: write large files to disk for interactive, exploratory analysis, or perform in situ analysis to save detailed data about phenomena that a scientists knows about in advance. We present a novel framework for a third option - a highly interactive, image-based approach that promotes exploration of simulation results, and is easily accessed through extensions to widely used open source tools. This in situ approach supports interactive exploration of a wide range of results, while still significantly reducing data movement and storage.

In the context of cooperative work a team alternates divergence phases where each member works in insulation on copies of objects and convergence phases during which the group reconciles and validates data. To support this style of working, we propose the concept of SAMS environment. A SAMS environment allows team members to work in synchronous, asynchronous or multi-synchronous mode while ensuring the coherence of shared data.