The Hidden Infrastructure Powering Global Scientific Collaboration

How 2,600+ research institutions use Globus to move 2PB daily, reduce time-to-insight from weeks to hours, and enable compliant multi-institutional collaboration.

Behind every scientific breakthrough—from COVID drug discovery to filling gaps in the human genome—lies a data infrastructure challenge. How do you enable researchers at different institutions to securely share petabytes of data, run computations on distributed resources, and automate complex workflows without armies of IT staff?

This is the problem Globus has spent nearly 30 years solving. Operating as a non-profit service from the University of Chicago, Globus now supports 779,000+ users across 2,600+ institutions in 80+ countries, handling 2 petabytes of daily data transfer. Three Nobel Prize-winning projects have used Globus technology.

The Business Problem

Modern research is inherently collaborative and data-intensive. "Hardly any researcher today does science on their own," explains Rachana Ananthakrishnan, Executive Director of Globus. "It's almost always they are working with researchers at other institutions, whether it's within a country or it's international collaborations."

This creates unique challenges:

Multi-institutional collaboration means researchers need to work across security boundaries without traditional B2B agreements. "You have tens to hundreds of researchers at a given institution in a different domain decide to form partnerships," Ananthakrishnan notes. Each collaboration has domain-specific requirements and data protection agreements.

Resource distribution is the norm. Researchers access compute and storage at their home institution, national facilities, and cloud providers. "The well provisioned network makes it possible," with research networks offering 100-400 Gbps connectivity between sites.

The long tail of science means many small labs lack IT expertise. A 2008-2009 study revealed that large, well-funded projects could install and manage distributed computing software, but smaller labs couldn't take advantage. "There's a very long tail in science," Ananthakrishnan explains. This drove Globus's pivot from downloadable tools to managed services.

Measurable Business Impact

The results speak for themselves:

Time to insight improved dramatically. The Advanced Photon Source at Argonne reduced structure solving from weeks to hours by automating data movement and processing with Globus. For smart instruments doing ML-based experiments, complete feedback cycles now run in 31 seconds (7 seconds transfer + 19 seconds compute + 5 seconds return).

Increased participation through lower barriers. At Franklin & Marshall College, a biology professor defined a Globus Flow that volunteers could trigger with a button click. "It really increased the community participation," Ananthakrishnan notes. "In place of teaching all his volunteers how to do these 10 things, he defined a flow."

Operational efficiency through automation. The Rosalind Franklin Institute uses Globus throughout their entire data lifecycle—collection, collaboration, analysis, storage, and publication—managing approximately 70TB monthly.

Scale without limits through flat pricing. Subscriptions are enterprise-wide with unlimited users, deployments, and data volume. "Once a subscription is in place, any number of users, any number of deployments, any number of any amount of data, any compute, there's no limits there."

Risk Management and Compliance

For regulated data, Globus implements comprehensive controls:

• NIST 800-53 and 800-171 for federal data

• Business Associate Agreements for HIPAA

• GDPR and data protection agreements for international collaborations

• Fine-grained access controls with audit logging

"We have about little over 55 US institutions who have a BAA with us to do HIPAA regulated data at this point," Ananthakrishnan says. The security model is shared—Globus controls the platform, institutions control their endpoints—but Globus provides tools and configuration options to meet institutional requirements.

Strategic Value: Network Effects

What makes Globus particularly valuable is its network effects. With 2,140+ identity providers already integrated, researchers can immediately collaborate with colleagues at other institutions using existing credentials. No new account provisioning. No staging areas. No manual coordination.

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory demonstrates this at scale, distributing petabytes monthly to research institutions worldwide. The Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium used Globus to fill the final 4% of the human genome, enabling secure data sharing across an international team.

National cyberinfrastructures in Canada (Digital Research Alliance), Australia (AARNet), New Zealand (NeSI), South Africa, and the US have all adopted Globus as standard infrastructure. This creates a global ecosystem where researchers can seamlessly access data and compute across borders.

The Platform Approach

Rather than solving point problems, Globus provides a platform with six composable services: data transfer, sharing, unified access, search/discovery, compute, and workflow automation. Organizations can start with one capability and expand.

The platform is extensible through open APIs and a Community Connector Program that supports 30+ storage systems—from major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google) to enterprise systems (Dell, NetApp, IBM) to research-specific tools (iRODS, Ceph). "We have a huge set of connectors that we provide," Ananthakrishnan explains. "Some of it has been built in partnership with a vendor."

Investment Considerations

For institutions evaluating Globus, key factors include:

Pricing transparency: Flat annual subscriptions based on research expenditures, not consumption. No surprise bills, no capacity planning headaches.

Self-service deployment: "It's all self service deployment," with consulting available if needed. Email-based support with escalation for paid subscribers.

Quick time to value: 90-day free trials for qualified prospects. Many organizations start with data transfer, prove value, then expand to other capabilities.

Vendor neutrality: Globus doesn't lock you into specific storage or compute vendors. It adds value to what you already have.

Looking Forward

Globus is investing in four key areas: storage system insights (giving administrators visibility into how data is being accessed), integrated solutions that combine platform services, supporting agentic AI systems' use of research infrastructure, and additional compliance regimes.

For research-intensive organizations, the question isn't whether you need this kind of infrastructure—it's whether you build it yourself or leverage an existing platform. With 250+ current subscribers and 30 years of refinement, Globus offers a proven alternative to building from scratch.