Academic research has increasingly become reliant on processing complex data within short periods of time. Commercial applications are not always cost feasible for the academic researcher with access to vast hardware resources of the university. Noting a lack in software applications that meet the unique network user environment of academia Rich Wolski and his team set about developing an open source solution that was flexible and secure enough to ensure that the project was not used maliciously.

Avoiding the challenges of UI development Wolski chose to model Eucalyptus' interface to be as compatible with Amazon EC2. Creating a user friendly UI was not the only challenge and the university. Entering an environment of non-unique IPs where a strong demand existed for netbook platform support created more than a few of the challenges in developing a product that was stable and secure enough to meet the needs of researchers with little time for system administration.