GridCoord d 1

Funding structure and coordination

As already mentioned, a pioneering role was played in 1997 by the Task Force of Ministry for University and Scientific and Technological Research (chaired by Prof. Sergio De Julio) which elaborated the report on “High Performance Computing: Status and Perspectives” (co-ordinated by Marco Vanneschi), along with the proposal of a National Research Programme that contained many of the issues that in the timeframe 2000-2001 gave rise to the national projects in large-scale platforms and Grids.

In early 2000 Grid projects were funded in parallel either by Research Institutions like INFN or by R&D programmes like FIRB and PON. In September 2004 MIUR Minister Mrs L. Moratti adopted Grid as a new strategic Technological Platform for Italy providing an overall co-ordination framework. A first level of co-ordination bottom up was provided by the IG-BIGEST initiative and by the Grid.it project.

Current Initiatives at the Funding Body Level

To provide a solid co-ordination framework and to promote the exploitation of Grid in all possible domains the Italian Minister has launched the recent Grid Technology Platform Initiative.

The Grid Technological Platform (GTP) initiative aims at providing a framework for the co-ordination of the Grid activities carried out at national (and possibly in future at European and international level), and the efficient planning for the transition from the current phase, largely dominated by the R&D activities, to the one dominated by the innovation and exploitation of the Grid technology in new enabling e-Infrastructures and at industrial level. The first steps of this process require to:

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  Consolidate the middleware components, so far developed by independent R&D projects, into a general platform of Grid services coherent and interoperable, increasingly adhering to International Standards and made available under a common Open Source licence;
  
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  Start a series of pilot projects to exploit this Grid services platform at industrial at service level.
  

To reach these goals it is proposed to set up a reference organization involving all major Research Institutions active in the field, industries and End User organizations, with the aim to promote and support the prompt exploitation, at industrial level, of the new Grid platforms and providing, at the same time, a solid national foundation for the future evolution of this platform at EU and international level.

The Consortium for the Open Middleware Enabling Grid Applications (c-OMEGA) will allow Italy to maintain the current level of drive in grid developments and effectively collaborate with other similar initiatives, as those adopted by US and UK:

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  Open Middleware Initiative (OMII) in UK (http://www.omii.ac.uk/)
  
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  NMI in US (http://www.nsf-middleware.org/)
  

in providing a more solid foundation, for future standardization and exploitation activities, to the current middleware, often made available by R&D projects with short lifetime.

The main objectives for the c-OMEGA Consortium are to:

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  Become a reference for the creation, development, support and diffusion of a technological Grid platform in Italy and Europe, by working also in close coordination with US and Pacific-Asian countries;
  
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  Let coexist the research and academia objectives with those of the industrial, especially ICT, and Service (Health, School, Administration) sectors;
  
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  Extend at the level of the whole country with dissemination, formation and special pilot projects the industrial exploitation of the grid technology providing in this way an opportunity on the country for new growth, new jobs creation and for increasing at the same time the overall competitiveness.
  

The partners who have adhered so far to the c-OMEGA Consortium are:

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  Public Research Institutions: INFN, CNR, INAF, ICTP, several Universities
  
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  Computing Consortia: e.g. S-Paci,
  
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  Large companies: e.g., Unisis FIAT, RAI
  
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  International IT industries: e.g., IBM, Oracle
  
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  National IT industries: e.g., Datamat SPA, Engineering SPA
  
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  SMEs: e.g., Nice, Eurix, Create-Net, Exadron, Synapsis, Avanade, K-Solutions, Flextel
  
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  Public Consortia: e.g, ECT(Tn), Pisa Ricerche, ITC IRST (Tn)
  
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  Services: e.g., @TIM the Society for tele-medical care
  

Future Activities

It is proposed to promote the recognition of the Grid as a new Technological Platform of general interest for the European Community.

Some motivations are:

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  The total investment on Grids activities and related Grid empowered e-Infrastrutures in Europe in EU FP5, FP6 and national programmes amounts to more than 1000 M€(2002-2006). It is now the right time to efficiently co-ordinate their exploitation.
  
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  Some co-ordination for the Grid development in Europe has already been provided. See the Rome Workshop organized on December 2003 which has set up the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (eIRG) with members appointed by all EU Science Ministers.
  
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  The Grid is already in the list of the Quick Start projects supported by the EU IST units.
  
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  The development of ”Pan-European Grid-empowered e-Infrastructure of production quality” is a strong recent recommendation of the IST Advisory Group (ISTAG) for FP7. See ISTAG Position Paper to be published.
  

The support for the establishment of a Grid Technological Platform in FP7 is included in the Italian Position paper in preparation. Major issues that need to be addressed include:

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  1. Standardization
  
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  2. Software technology for application development and support
  
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  3. Performance and scalability
  
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  4. Policies and Business model
  
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  5. IPR and Licensing
  

Thus, it is recommended to promote the recognition of the Grid as a new EU Technological Platform of general interest for the European Community to coordinate future developments and the exploitation in Industry

It is recommended in this context to address urgently the 5 issues mentioned above. e-Infrastructures should be fully exploited to have a user validation of any new development of Grid technology.