CloudSigma Public Cloud Fuels 2013 NASA Space Apps Challenge

CloudSigma AG,
an international, customer-centric, pure-cloud IaaS provider, has provided free, compute resources for
2013’s NASA Space Apps Challenge
participants.

By contributing servers, featuring 30GB of storage, 2GB of RAM and 2GHz of CPU,
and a specially-configured central server, CloudSigma hopes to further
participants’ innovation to address top challenges on Earth and
in space.

Now in its second year, NASA’s International Space
Apps Challenge is a large collaborative technology development
event for software, hardware, data visualization and mobile apps. With 9,000+
participants (up from 2,000 the year before), this year’s challenges included
detecting near Earth objects (NEOs), revisiting how NASA offers data to the
public, and more effectively curating how to tell the story of space to the
world.

"We had
about 50 different challenge groups develop their space apps using our cloud,"
said Robert Jenkins, CloudSigma CEO and co-founder. "Since we have a completely open software layer that lets you configure
and deploy whatever you need, we were well suited to provide a flexible cloud
platform for this year’s competitors. It’s amazing to see the innovation coming
out of this event, and we feel honored to have been a part of it."

One of the local winners from Rome, Space Cal App,
used CloudSigma’s flexible compute resources to develop an app
that combines satellite information to make information more easily accessible
on mobile platforms. The Space Cal App team will go into the global pool of the
top 20 solutions (five in each category) for further consideration and
development.

In a blog post on open.NASA, Nick Skytland, NASA open innovation
program manager, said: "The
International Space Apps Challenge was the culmination of months of planning,
years of experimentation and thousands and thousands of hours of hard work from
people across the globe who share in the excitement of building our collective
future. It is a shining example that transparency, participation and
collaboration are alive and well at NASA."

The app development took place during a two-day
code-a-thon from April 20-21, 2013. Local winners have already been chosen, but
judging is ongoing through May to determine overall category winners, which
will be announced on spaceappschallenge.org and the open.NASA blog on May 22,
2013.