EARNEST: Providing Foresight
It is essential for the competitiveness of European research and education that the research and education networking infrastructure and its associated services remain at the forefront of worldwide developments after the completion of the GÉANT2 project. Although the political support to achieve this goal has been clearly established, implementation of the political decision in operational actions needs to be prepared by further studies.
The choice of technologies, services and research activities in the current project has been influenced by the findings of the SERENATE foresight study that was conducted during 2002 and 2003. In the same way, the outcomes of the EARNEST (Education And Research Networking Evolution STudy) foresight study that is being conducted within GÉANT2 are expected to influence the future development of research and education networking infrastructure and services after the completion of the GÉANT2 project.
EARNEST began on 1 March 2006, and will run until 31 October 2007. It is co-ordinated by TERENA, and has been broken down into seven sub-studies:
- Researchers’ needs: assessing the services users expect to require from research networks in 5-10 years’ time, and examining the impact of recent developments in infrastructure and services on research in various disciplines
- Technical issues: focusing in particular on transmission technologies, control planes, operations and performance, and middleware
- Campus issues: looking at the areas of campus bottlenecks, provision of network services, rolling out IPv6, training network staff and collaborating with other infrastructure providers
- Economic issues: examining key trends in the availability and cost of fibre, and in national approaches to pricing and cost-sharing
- Geographic issues: investigating the impact of overall national and regional policies and priorities, with a view to producing a better measuring approach and understanding of the challenges at hand
- Organisational and governance issues: exploring the structures underlying the planning and delivery of new services, in order to suggest ways in which they can be improved to meet the service aspirations of the research and education communities in Europe and beyond
- Other users’ needs: analysing in greater depth user groups outside research and higher education, their needs, and how national research and education network organisations respond to those needs.
The study is led by a panel of 13 key members of the networking community:
- Dorte Olesen, UNI-C (Chair)
- Karel Vietsch, TERENA (Coordinator)
- Robin Arak, Archway Computer Associates Ltd
- Patrick Bressler, European Science Foundation
- Valentino Cavalli, TERENA
- Dai Davies, DANTE
- John Dyer, TERENA
- Licia Florio, TERENA
- Sabine Jaume-Rajaonia, RENATER
- Jean-Paul le Guigner, CRU
- Kevin Meynell, TERENA
- Martin Price, EUNIS
- Jorge Sanchez-Papaspiliou, J&N Partners
An initial workshop took place in May 2006 to officially launch the project, bringing together invited representatives from all stakeholders.
Above all, EARNEST will make a clear and compelling case for sustainability of pan-European research networking for the foreseeable future as research and education continue to progress. For more in-depth information on the aims and methods of EARNEST, please follow the link alongside to visit the main EARNEST pages on TERENA’s website.
