Researchers increasingly rely on using web-based systems for accessing and running scientific applications across distributed computing resources. However existing systems lack a number of important features, such as publication and sharing of scientific applications as online services, decoupling of applications from computing resources and providing remote programmatic access. This paper presents Everest, a web-based platform for researchers supporting publication, execution and composition of applications running across distributed computing resources. Everest addresses the described challenges by relying on modern web technologies and cloud computing models. It follows the Platform as a Service (PaaS) cloud delivery model by providing all its functionality via remote web and programming interfaces. Any application added to Everest is automatically published both as a user-facing web form and a web service. Another distinct feature of Everest is the ability to attach external computing resources by any user and flexibly use these resources for running applications. The paper provides an overview of the platform's architecture and its main components, describes recent developments, presents results of experimental evaluation of the platform and discusses remaining challenges.

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The use of service-oriented approach in scientific domains can increase research productivity by enabling sharing, publication and reuse of computing applications, as well as automation of scientific workflows. Everest is a cloud platform that enables researchers with minimal skills to publish and use scientific applications as services. In contrast to existing solutions, Everest executes applications on external resources attached by users, implements flexible binding of resources to applications and supports programmatic access to the platform's functionality. The paper presents current state of the platform, recent developments and remaining challenges.

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Parameter sweep applications are a very important class of applications, which are typically defined as a set of computational experiments over a set of input parameters, each of which is executed with its own parameter combination. These computations arise in many scientific contexts. This article introduces the Parameter Sweep web service that runs such applications in distributed computing environment. Also discussed is the Everest cloud platform, on which this service is built.