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This could satisfy a real need at MIT. Longjobs failed, and the ad-hoc solution of "Run your jobs in 37-332 and hope nobody logs you out" isn't great. UCop allows users to make use of computing clusters like Amazon EC2. Its goal is to outsource slow parallelizable tasks, with a minimal number of roundtrips, and over slow links if necessary. The downside is that software needs to be modified slightly to make use of UCop (in the same way that software previously needed to be modified to make use of x87 co-processors). However, we might be able to modify packages for which we have the source. It's not a one-size-fits-all cure for heavy computation, but it might serve some purpose.

Vaguely off-topic:

Pixaxe (full paper) a new client-focused web application framework.

Possibly applicable for services we might offer, or for students or faculty wishing to design new dynamic websites. However, existing services (like Scripts) will likely remain more popular.