The Globus initiative is a nonprofit research IT platform developed and operated by the University of Chicago, with a mission to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of data-driven research through sustainable software. For nearly 30 years, Globus has evolved from early distributed computing and grid technologies into a leading software-as-a-service platform for managing research data, computation, and collaboration at scale. Its work has supported major scientific advances and global research infrastructure, including grid computing contributions associated with Nobel-recognized discoveries and large international scientific collaborations.
The platform is designed specifically for the research market, which has unique requirements such as secure but open science, highly distributed multi-institutional collaborations, and diverse domain-specific tools and workflows. Researchers typically operate in environments with on-premise compute and storage, high-performance networks, and access to distributed national or international computing resources, creating a need for unified, secure, and reliable data and compute services across heterogeneous systems.
Globus provides a comprehensive research IT platform that includes managed data transfer and synchronization, collaborative data sharing, unified data access across storage systems, publication and discovery services, remote compute execution, automation workflows, and metadata indexing for data discovery. Its hybrid architecture integrates hosted cloud services with local agents and institutional resources, enabling secure, federated access and orchestration across laptops, labs, on-prem infrastructure, cloud storage, and HPC facilities. Key capabilities include “fire-and-forget” reliable data transfers, secure tunneling across security boundaries, fine-grained access control for sharing, and federated authentication.
Globus also supports protected and regulated data, offers automation and orchestration tools (Flows), and enables scalable compute execution across diverse environments (Globus Compute). Adoption metrics indicate widespread global use across thousands of institutions, users, and data collections, with significant data volumes transferred daily. The platform follows a freemium subscription model, with free access for nonprofit research and paid tiers for enhanced features, compliance requirements, and commercial use. Target customers include research universities, national labs, supercomputing centers, government agencies, and commercial research organizations.
Overall, Globus positions itself as a horizontal, domain-agnostic infrastructure layer for modern research, addressing the challenges of distributed science, data-intensive workflows, and collaborative research ecosystems.
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