GÉANT, Other e-Infrastructures and the Future Internet – Driving European Innovation

Michael Enrico
TrackTrack 3 --Lecture Hall IX on the First Floor
DescriptionOver 1,000 terabytes of data passes through GÉANT's IP backbone each day, much of it linked to the most advanced and far-reaching research being carried out today. However, the creation and sharing of research data is increasing exponentially, impacting research networks, high performance computing, grids and collaborative data infrastructures – collectively known as e-infrastructures.
GÉANT’s recent major upgrade to terabit technology that is also SDN-ready ensures this vital support to all scientific disciplines (from high-energy physics and deep space research to those addressing societal challenges such as ageing populations, disease diagnosis and climate change) will continue well into the future – providing access to richer and ever more integrated service capabilities at higher capacities with ever shorter provisioning times and even higher levels of resilience.
However we need to keep pushing forward and innovating to ensure Europe’s e-infrastructures remain at the forefront of technology for the benefit of all its citizens. This is the reason behind the GÉANT Innovation Programme, encompassing:
• GÉANT’s first Open Call, a €3.3m initiative to boost innovation in networking technologies. Already 21 projects are working on a variety of topics and set to deliver results within the next 12 months. Many of these are in the important areas of SDN and AAI.
• Joint research programmes into network architectures for Horizon 2020; technology testing for specific service applications; and identity and trust technologies for GÉANT services.
• Testbeds to support the network research community with an environment in which to conduct technologically disruptive experiments.
• Leading the development and implementation of open standards to ensure interoperability with services of other networking organisations around the world and the commercial ICT service sector.
Alongside the Innovation Programme, work is ongoing to ensure alignment of GÉANT with the needs of the R&E community and the Future Internet and Cloud Service communities within the EC’s Horizon 2020 programme. With respect to the FI and Cloud communities, apart from there being a substantive and growing synergy between them, they also demonstrate a productive melting pot in which researchers and commercial players exist side-by-side and collaborate in many innovative ways – an effective instantiation of the public private partnership (PPP) paradigm.
This paper will outline recent transformative developments in the GÉANT network, and the continuing work by many to bring together Europe’s NRENs along with the other e-infrastructures and the Future Internet and Cloud communities towards the common goal of realising a competitive and innovative Europe that lasts well into the future.
The GÉANT project is a collaboration between 41 partners: 38 European NRENs, DANTE, TERENA and NORDUnet.

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