Cloud computing is bringing many data science benefits within reach of even small and midsized organizations.

Data science’s foundation is the manipulation and analysis of extremely large data sets; the cloud provides access to storage infrastructures capable of handling large amounts of data with ease. Data science also involves running machine learning algorithms that demand massive processing power; the cloud makes available the high-performance compute that’s necessary for the task. To purchase equivalent on-site hardware would be far too expensive for many enterprises and research teams, but the cloud makes access affordable with per-use or subscription-based pricing.

Cloud infrastructures can be accessed from anywhere in the world, making it possible for multiple groups of data scientists to share access to the data sets they’re working with in the cloud—even if they’re located in different countries.

Open source technologies are widely used in data science tool sets. When they’re hosted in the cloud, teams don’t need to install, configure, maintain, or update them locally. Several cloud providers also offer prepackaged tool kits that enable data scientists to build models without coding, further democratizing access to the innovations and insights that this discipline is making available.