European eInfrastructures Working Group
The eInfrastructures Working Group’s vision is to support and extend the development of eInfrastructures such that they become invisible to the user, allowing the seamless delivery of knowledge enabled by massive computing resources, in as transparent a manner as the delivery of electricity.
eInfrastructures make it possible to share resources, ideas and skills, enabling and supporting truly collaborative working throughout the research and education community. eInfrastructures are collections of ICT-based resources, consisting of network links, computers, storage systems and related technology. These resources are distributed, in that they are owned by many different organisations in a variety of locations.
The eInfrastructures Working Group aims to co-operate with business, but its main purpose is to support pre-competitive research. The Working Group comprises leading research infrastructure projects:
- GÉANT2
- DEISA
- EGEE-II
- OMII-Europe
- BELIEF
GÉANT2 provides the underlying network infrastructure on which Europe’s eInfrastructures are built. On GÉANT2 are based the grid computing projects that form the next layer of the eInfrastructure: EGEE-II and DEISA. EGEE-II is focused on providing overall capacity, with a grid designed to employ a large number of lower-capacity nodes. DEISA is a supercomputing grid, and provides a smaller number of high-performance nodes.
OMII-Europe is a co-ordination initiative amongst middleware, and a key project contributing middleware to the overall European eInfrastructure. Middleware is important for ensuring seamless interoperability between the elements of the eInfrastructure, and for providing end users, who may not be technical experts, with a coherent service and experience.
The BELIEF project is intended to create knowledge-exchange and raise awareness of e-Infrastructures developments. It does so both through its digital library, comprising e-Infrastructure documentation and related services, and through networking events and publications.
Networking, middleware and resources such as supercomputers, storage, grid-enabled instruments, grid data, together make up the e-Infrastructure, working to fulfil a vision of the Europe research infrastructure as one interconnected system.
