SCIENCE

—Internet2 has announced individual partnerships with HP, SHI International and Box to deliver new Internet2 NET+ Services, including cloud computing and infrastructure services, to Internet2 members’ faculty, staff and students nationwide. The announcement was made at today’s Internet2 Fall Member Meeting. 

“These partnerships benefit our members by making secure and very affordable cloud computing services available anywhere, anytime,” said Dave Lambert, President and CEO, Internet2. “By leveraging existing community investments, Internet2 provides seamless access to standard and customized offerings from industry leaders for chief information officers in higher education to consider in their technology plans. Internet2 NET+ Services are the next generation of value from Internet2.“ 

Internet2 NET+ Services provide “above the network” services to Internet2 member organizations, including higher education, government, and industry. Cornell University; Indiana University; Penn State; University of California, Berkeley; University of Michigan; University of Notre Dame; University of Utah; and other Internet2 participating campuses will immediately begin testing and validating some of the specific offerings and services. The new services will create a platform tailored to the needs of the Internet2 community, and will leverage Internet2’s 100G network and InCommon identity management services. Higher education members who are InCommon subscribers may purchase Box and HP services in early 2012, as part of their annual membership. 

Based on the HP Converged Infrastructure and HP Cloud System solutions, HP, in conjunction with SHI, will provide a “private community cloud” suite of infrastructure services that are designed to meet required levels of security, performance and availability for higher education. HP and SHI will operate these services for the Internet2 community. SHI Cloud combines best-of-breed technologies to create the most secure, high-performance, and industrial grade cloud offering with private, dedicated, managed or multi-tenant options. Indiana University; Penn State; University of Notre Dame; and the University of Utah will participate in a pilot program after which the service will be made broadly available. 

“Top research institutions require flexible, affordable cloud services to be able to conduct some of the most important, compute-intensive research in the world,” said Rich Geraffo, senior vice president and managing director of HP Enterprise business. “HP and SHI are teaming up to deliver Internet2 members the reliability, performance and scalability required to further advance these innovative efforts.” 

“Academic communities are driving innovation in every industry, and they require a cloud platform that’s powerful, secure, and scalable to support their computing needs,” says Thai Lee, president and CEO of SHI. “By joining forces with HP and Internet2, we’ll be able to deliver and manage an affordable private cloud that will let research teams focus on their work, not their IT department. Further, our robust industrial-grade cloud platform will support the core mission of Internet2 by delivering technology that goes beyond today and meets future needs of the computing world.” 

Box provides secure, scalable content sharing and collaboration that both users and IT love and adopt. Box's dynamic, flexible content management solution empowers users to share and access content from anywhere, while providing IT enterprise-grade security and oversight into how content moves within their organizations. Content on Box can also be accessed through mobile applications, and extended to partner applications such as Google Apps. Cornell University; Indiana University; University of California, Berkeley; University of Michigan; University of Notre Dame; and other early adopters will immediately begin using Box to validate and tune the offering. 

“Today, cloud solutions can easily and securely connect users to their content, which allows them to make better decisions – faster – and work more effectively with anyone,” said Dan Levin, COO of Box. “We are thrilled to be working with Internet2 so universities across the country can use Box to access their information, collaborate with others and share valuable content from wherever they are.”