  The scientific computing landscape has evolved dramatically in the past few
years, with new schemes for organizing and storing data that reflect the growth
in size and complexity of astronomical data sets. In response to this changing
landscape, we are, over the next two years, deploying the next generation of
the Montage toolkit ([ascl:1010.036]). The first release (October 2015)
supports multi-dimensional data sets ("data cubes"), and insertion of XMP/AVM
tags that allows images to "drop-in" to the WWT. The same release offers a
beta-version of web-based interactive visualization of images; this includes
wrappers for visualization in Python. Subsequent releases will support HEALPix
(now standard in cosmic background experiments); incorporation of Montage into
package managers (which enable automated management of software builds), and
support for a library that will enable Montage to be called directly from
Python. This next generation toolkit will inherit the architectural benefits of
the current engine - component based tools, ANSI-C portability across Unix
platforms and scalability for distributed processing. With the expanded
functionality under development, Montage can be viewed not simply as a mosaic
engine, but as a scalable, portable toolkit for managing, organizing and
processing images.
