Evolving the VO: from interoperable data collections to an integrated system of services for data-intensive science

Abstract

The Virtual Observatory (VO) represents a successful international enterprise providing interoperability of data collections, thus allowing the possibility of multi-frequency and multi-messenger research. The Big Data era, that astrophysics has stepped into, is forcing scientists to perform data-intensive research. This new concept requires an evolution of the VO concept to provide additional services, in order to transform the VO: from sets of interoperable data to an integrated system of services capable of supporting data-intensive science.