INDUSTRY
Smart Technologies for Business and Science
- Written by: Writer
- Category: INDUSTRY
For five years the Enabling Grids for EsciencE (EGEE-III) project has been assisting businesses, small and large, to harness its Open Source Grid technologies — both to improve IT performance and to bring new products to market. At this one-day workshop, EGEE-III, Europe’s leading grid computing project, joins forces with BEinGRID (Business Experiments in Grid), the European Union’s largest Integrated Project under the 6th Framework Programme. Tangible opportunities for European businesses and the transfer of smart technologies are high on the agenda as EGEE transitions to a sustainable operational model, which will see collaborative research supported through the European Grid Initiative (EGI) from 2010.
Steven Newhouse, EGEE-III Technical Director, spotlights the achievements and future plans of the project’s business activities, looking at several hurdles that have been cleared and some new challenges lying ahead. “Sustainability of the European Grid Infrastructure is intimately bound up with rapidly and widely enlarging the user base across EU27,” explains Per Öster, IT Centre for Science, CSC. “This will be achieved through an effective programme for dissemination, training and technology transfer towards the business world.”
EGEE’s scientific communities need commercial or non-commercial licensed software to support many stages of their application workflows. This is a key opportunity for businesses wishing to exploit the EGEE grid infrastructure. The MATLAB Distributed Computing Server (MDCS), which has been ported to EGEE in collaboration with The MathWorks, is the focus of a presentation by Vangelis Floros from Greek Research and Technology Network, GRNET. Pawel Plaszczak, president of GridwiseTech and an EGEE Business Associate, presents a possible future way to expand EGEE’s infrastructure using AdHoc, an advanced framework for sharing geographically distributed data and compute resources that brings innovation to the concept of Virtual Organisations (VOs).
Specific outcomes from EGEE-III are currently being taken up by StratusLab, a research initiative exploring the integration of cloud technologies and services, especially virtualisation, into existing grid infrastructures. Ignacio Llorente from Universidad Complutense Madrid sheds light on the advantages to both resource providers and end-users and the technical challenges and steps involved.
Santi Ristol, Atos Origin and co-ordinator of BEinGRID, presents an overview of a successful business pilot launch platform that demonstrates real grid applications, focusing on specific business challenges and addressing current customer needs. Karita Luokkanen, Atos Origin, presents the key findings of an in-depth analysis of business models, value chains and the benefits of grid and cloud computing, which will be featured in a book published by BEinGRID later this year. Igor Rosenberg, Atos Origin, explains the methodology they followed to analyse concurrent business situations, and how this led to the production of software, along with generic designs. The methodology is highlighted using the example of the SLA domain. GRIA, the first middleware designed for commercial use, has been deployed in advanced manufacturing, finance, logistics and tourism within BEinGRID. Stephen Philips, IT Innovation, takes a look at GRIA B2B solutions and business benefits. Daniel Field, Atos Origin, presents Gridipedia, originally conceived as a "second front" for BEinGRID to foster pervasive uptake of grid computing by businesses. The talk explores the challenges involved in creating an up-to-date, vendor-independent and highly distilled information site — adapting to the swift market swing from ‘grids’ to ‘clouds’, while paving the way for a commercial endeavour under the name of “IT-Tude” after the end of the project.
With IT spending expected to increase in the EU public sector, all eyes should be on smart solutions for the healthcare sector. Maat-g delivers insights into leveraging EGEE technologies to deliver enhanced services for the healthcare sector. New solutions for the healthcare sector are also presented by Andrés Gómez, of the Supercomputing Centre of Galicia, CESGA. The talk revolves around a BEinGRID business pilot that focuses on using smart tools to plan cancer treatment, tools provided to hospitals under a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model that hides the complexity of the backend hardware from the users. The first 18 completed pilots are presented in a full case study guide available from the BEinGRID website, with an expanded edition covering seven additional solutions due to be released in the coming months.
Further examples of technology transfer are presented by Jim Austin, Cybula Ltd, who refers particularly to the challenges bound up with taking innovative technologies to market. The talk illustrates how a grid-based distributed signal search system, Signal Data Explorer, has been adopted by industry, including major customers like Rolls-Royce Aeroengines.
EGEE Business Forum: http://www.eu-egee.org/index.php?id=120
Steven Newhouse, EGEE-III Technical Director, spotlights the achievements and future plans of the project’s business activities, looking at several hurdles that have been cleared and some new challenges lying ahead. “Sustainability of the European Grid Infrastructure is intimately bound up with rapidly and widely enlarging the user base across EU27,” explains Per Öster, IT Centre for Science, CSC. “This will be achieved through an effective programme for dissemination, training and technology transfer towards the business world.”
EGEE’s scientific communities need commercial or non-commercial licensed software to support many stages of their application workflows. This is a key opportunity for businesses wishing to exploit the EGEE grid infrastructure. The MATLAB Distributed Computing Server (MDCS), which has been ported to EGEE in collaboration with The MathWorks, is the focus of a presentation by Vangelis Floros from Greek Research and Technology Network, GRNET. Pawel Plaszczak, president of GridwiseTech and an EGEE Business Associate, presents a possible future way to expand EGEE’s infrastructure using AdHoc, an advanced framework for sharing geographically distributed data and compute resources that brings innovation to the concept of Virtual Organisations (VOs).
Specific outcomes from EGEE-III are currently being taken up by StratusLab, a research initiative exploring the integration of cloud technologies and services, especially virtualisation, into existing grid infrastructures. Ignacio Llorente from Universidad Complutense Madrid sheds light on the advantages to both resource providers and end-users and the technical challenges and steps involved.
Santi Ristol, Atos Origin and co-ordinator of BEinGRID, presents an overview of a successful business pilot launch platform that demonstrates real grid applications, focusing on specific business challenges and addressing current customer needs. Karita Luokkanen, Atos Origin, presents the key findings of an in-depth analysis of business models, value chains and the benefits of grid and cloud computing, which will be featured in a book published by BEinGRID later this year. Igor Rosenberg, Atos Origin, explains the methodology they followed to analyse concurrent business situations, and how this led to the production of software, along with generic designs. The methodology is highlighted using the example of the SLA domain. GRIA, the first middleware designed for commercial use, has been deployed in advanced manufacturing, finance, logistics and tourism within BEinGRID. Stephen Philips, IT Innovation, takes a look at GRIA B2B solutions and business benefits. Daniel Field, Atos Origin, presents Gridipedia, originally conceived as a "second front" for BEinGRID to foster pervasive uptake of grid computing by businesses. The talk explores the challenges involved in creating an up-to-date, vendor-independent and highly distilled information site — adapting to the swift market swing from ‘grids’ to ‘clouds’, while paving the way for a commercial endeavour under the name of “IT-Tude” after the end of the project.
With IT spending expected to increase in the EU public sector, all eyes should be on smart solutions for the healthcare sector. Maat-g delivers insights into leveraging EGEE technologies to deliver enhanced services for the healthcare sector. New solutions for the healthcare sector are also presented by Andrés Gómez, of the Supercomputing Centre of Galicia, CESGA. The talk revolves around a BEinGRID business pilot that focuses on using smart tools to plan cancer treatment, tools provided to hospitals under a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model that hides the complexity of the backend hardware from the users. The first 18 completed pilots are presented in a full case study guide available from the BEinGRID website, with an expanded edition covering seven additional solutions due to be released in the coming months.
Further examples of technology transfer are presented by Jim Austin, Cybula Ltd, who refers particularly to the challenges bound up with taking innovative technologies to market. The talk illustrates how a grid-based distributed signal search system, Signal Data Explorer, has been adopted by industry, including major customers like Rolls-Royce Aeroengines.
EGEE Business Forum: http://www.eu-egee.org/index.php?id=120