Roma, 9 December 2003 1The EU eInfrastructure initiative

An e-Infrastructure in Europe:a strategy and policy driven

approach

Dany.Vandromme@renater.fr

Roma, 9 December 2003 2The EU eInfrastructure initiative

Remind from Athens meeting

• Progress with telecommunication industry rather than against! But:

• Significant amount of DIY will be increasingly required

• NREN organisation is getting stronger and better organised

• Sustained political support must be maintained

Roma, 9 December 2003 3The EU eInfrastructure initiative

From Athens to Roma!

• e-Infrastructure is not just physical networks.• e-Infrastructure is also services, like GRIDs,

communities, access to other research infrastructures or just a top-quality Internet to access information.

• Further global development is not only technology driven: Need to set up the basis of a policy and strategy-driven approach to answer the user needs

Roma, 9 December 2003 4The EU eInfrastructure initiative

EUROPEAN CONTEXT - NREN• European NREN Consortium made of +30 Members

representative of countries : NRENPC

• Collective action for the deployment of the successive pan-European backbone network infrastructures

• Policy driven decision making rules put in place by the NREN Policy Committee

• Coordination and operational tasks delegated to DANTE, a not-for-profit company owned by the NRENs

• Infrastructure cofunded by EC and NRENs

Roma, 9 December 2003 5The EU eInfrastructure initiative

EUROPEAN CONTEXT - NRENBack-up• NRENs are installed by the Member States (+ other

countries), which support their activity.• NREN’s policies are defined and implemented

nationally• NREN’s collective action (like GEANT) is supported

by the EC (via co-funding), and matches with the EU policy and startegic objectives.

Roma, 9 December 2003 6The EU eInfrastructure initiative

EUROPEAN CONTEXT - NREN• Current achievement is GEANT network, which

brought back Europe on the forefront of the world scene of Research Networks

• More than the technology, the organisational model of GEANT is the more significant achievement

• It allows Europe to expand its influence in other world regions (Med, LAC, AP), but also to revise the cost sharing habits for intercontinental connectivity!

• Dedicated to serve all scientific communities (including but not only GRIDs) with shared AUP rules

Roma, 9 December 2003 7The EU eInfrastructure initiative

EUROPEAN CONTEXT - GRIDS• GRID Projects oriented services to users

(EGEE, DataGrid, DEISA, SEE-GRID, + many others)

• Development projects oriented towards : – Scientific communities with wide coverage of

services like grid computing, distributed storage, on-demand resource allocation (EGEE)

– Usages for targeted users (like High Performance Computing with DEISA)

Roma, 9 December 2003 8The EU eInfrastructure initiative

EUROPEAN CONTEXT - GRIDS• Virtual organisations (VO) for Research

– Astronomy (VLBI, Virtual Observatory, Stellar databases, etc…)

– Climate (European Computing Facility, Real time data assimilation)

– Earth observation (Data acquisition and merging)– Biology (today: distributed collaborative

databases, to-morrow: on-line distributed instant computing)

– Cooperative engineering (Aero, Auto, etc…)

Roma, 9 December 2003 9The EU eInfrastructure initiative

EUROPEAN CONTEXT - GRIDS• Other virtual organisations (VO) which may

be found outside the R&E world:– Health care– Public services and administrations– Cooperative arts and cultural heritage– etc…

Roma, 9 December 2003 10The EU eInfrastructure initiative

EUROPEAN CONTEXT - GRIDS• Other projects oriented IT technology

development like 6NET + many national initiatives (IT, GR, DE, HU, UK, etc…) + numerous FP6 projects still in preparation)

Roma, 9 December 2003 11The EU eInfrastructure initiative

EUROPEAN CONTEXT - GRIDSBack-up

• GRID projects are issued from FP (or national) project calls

• When selected, they are supported by EC and the project partners

• All projects are dedicated to develop and/or to serve (communities) but not from a national policy decision (even if they are welcomed)

Roma, 9 December 2003 12The EU eInfrastructure initiative

ESFRI (1/2)• “European Strategy Forum for Research

Infrastructures”• Created as a follow-on action from the RI

Conference in Strasbourg in September 2001.• Made of high level government representatives

of the EU Member States + EC• Address all science fields in the context of

Research Infrastructures of European significance

Roma, 9 December 2003 13The EU eInfrastructure initiative

ESFRI (2/2)• Marine Research, Neutron sources, Free

Electron Lasers, etc…• Working Group on High Performance

Computing and Networking since June 2003• Inventory of available resources across Europe• Identify science cases of which progress

depend on HPCN development• Propose strategic guidance to progress

Roma, 9 December 2003 14The EU eInfrastructure initiative

Other bodies and fora

• ESF, EURAB, EIFORUM may happen to discuss about networks, grids and related topics.

• International cooperation (NA, AP, LAC, AU, etc…) both for infrastructure, middleware, normalisation and standards at all levels of the eInfrastructure.

• Interactions with the non-R&E world!

Roma, 9 December 2003 15The EU eInfrastructure initiative

How does this work? (1/4)

1) Variations about access?

• Compliance with an AUP (GEANT)

• Suited to the project objectives (DEISA)

• Membership of the project itself (EGEE, 6NET) or of a predefined community (LCG)

• ?

Roma, 9 December 2003 16The EU eInfrastructure initiative

How does this work? (2/4)

2) Scientific Excellence?• Scientific criteria for admission : the scientific

bodies, within projects/organisation are competent for evaluating the project/organisation itself, but not the scientific activities of users (except for community grids like LCG)

• or objective scientific evaluation is made by the funding authorities.

Roma, 9 December 2003 17The EU eInfrastructure initiative

How does this work? (3/4)

3) Variable geometry and geographical coverage?• GRID infrastructures (including research

networks) are a unique opportunity to integrate all countries in a European Research and Education Area

• Networks are also THE way for all researchers to access large scale shared facilities in Europe and worldwide.

Roma, 9 December 2003 18The EU eInfrastructure initiative

How does this work? (4/4)4) Information dissemination?• NRENs are not known from most users! Internet is!

And users require very high quality Internet• GRID concept is unknown from almost everyone in

Europe. Most researchers ignore what is (or could be) made available to them. But only the service needs to be properly advertised to users!

• Surprisingly, big companies are marketing “on-demand computing” to the commercial without using the word GRID!

Roma, 9 December 2003 19The EU eInfrastructure initiative

Requirements for a policy approach (1/4)

• Cooperation between networks and services layers, organisation-wise

• Cooperation at the technical and operational level: a GRID service may require non-standard network resources in a completely automated manner

Roma, 9 December 2003 20The EU eInfrastructure initiative

Requirements for a policy approach (2/4)

• Network infrastructures are expected to be informative, but reactive and adaptive as well

• GRIDs infrastructure may not expect using non existing network resources

• There are a huge potential for sharing resources between GRIDs and networks (NOC, monitoring tools) to avoid useless duplication

Roma, 9 December 2003 21The EU eInfrastructure initiative

Requirements for a policy approach (3/4)

• Need to implement a user oriented approach for the presentation of services: Most users do not need GRID services, while they need network services.

• European integration will not occur without the full implementation of end-to-end services

• eInfrastructure must be also a vector to prevent/fight the digital divide

Roma, 9 December 2003 22The EU eInfrastructure initiative

Requirements for a policy approach (4/4)

• Require to articulate the network and GRID initiatives/projects with the national and European science programmes and policies

• In particular, there is no global resource allocation policy, able to combine peer review, funding constraints, national policies etc…

• Global discussion, political support etc…

Roma, 9 December 2003 23The EU eInfrastructure initiative

Rationale for a policy approach

• E-Infrastructure is neither just networks, nor GRIDs, nor services: It is all!

• Avoid duplication between projects• Share information about available resources,

best practices, service architecture, access, etc.• Standardisation of service interfaces for users • Based on long term strategy or vision (longer

that the project timescales)

Roma, 9 December 2003 24The EU eInfrastructure initiative

END OF PRESENTATION!

?Question

s

Roma, 9 December 2003 25The EU eInfrastructure initiative

Future trends

• Not to substitute to telecommunications operators, but acquire products and services not off-the-shelves.

• Cooperate with Telcos but convince them to provide raw capacity at the lowest rates as possible and bring most of the technology mastering in the NRENs hands: WDM instead of SDH, lit fibres instead of WDM, and eventually dark fibres instead of lit fibres when feasable.

• Customize and provide network services by the NRENs themselves (DANTE for collective actions)

Roma, 9 December 2003 26The EU eInfrastructure initiative

Challenges• Not to be destructive for the telecommunications

industry, but incentive for new services• Coordinate disparate actions like xx-Light initiatives

which promote lambdas rather than usages• Account for differentiated economical and regulatory

contexts to harmonize the European network and reduce the digital divide.

• TEN-155/GEANT issue was to managed simultaneously liberalized markets and monopolies: Next will be to manage also markets with no rules!

Roma, 9 December 2003 27The EU eInfrastructure initiative

Facts

• It is acknowledged that TEN-155 and GEANT have significantly improved the research network situation in Europe.

• However, the gap between extremes has also significantly increased.

• Today, SEE countries are among the most expensive countries from GEANT point of view!

• Poland and Czeck Republik have adopted a different approach to be among the most advanced partners.

Roma, 9 December 2003 28The EU eInfrastructure initiative

Facts

• The difficulty, reported for the SEE is well confirmed by the EUMEDCONNECT tendering process!

• Better to cooperate (eventually being VERY incentive) with telcos than to fight them to improve the market situation, induced by the lack of competition.

• Governments may help, because of specific needs for Education and Research.

• New European rules for procurement will help.