Virtual research environments as-a-Service

In this presentation it is discussed the experience made by a series of initiatives and projects (e.g. D4Science and iMarine) enabling the creation and provisioning of Virtual Research Environments by the as-a-Service paradigm. In particular, it is presented the gCube technology by focusing on the mechanisms enabling the automatic creation and operation of VREs by relying on an extended resource space (comprising datasets, functionalities, services) built by aggregating constituents from existing Infrastructures and Information Systems. This mechanism envisages a definition phase and a deployment phase.