GridCoord d 1

Member States Strategy and co-ordination

Several GridCoord countries are deploying an already existing strategy, in line with the main drivers as explained above, or developing a ‘novel’ Grid strategy taking into account the latest developments.

Austria

In Austria, there had been no coordinated national funding of Grid projects until 2003. The only national Austrian initiative dealing with Grid Computing is the AUSTRIAN GRID. Nearly all people interested and active in Grid research are integrated in it. Therefore it represents the entire Grid research community in Austria.

France

The coordination has always been driven by the various public partners. First actions were the RNRT (1998-2002) and RNTL (2000-2002), sponsored by the Ministry of Industry and Telecoms, followed by the ACI-GRID, of the Ministry of Research. France has been undergoing some major structural governmental changes with the creation in 2005 of the ANR, the National Research Agency, which now federates all the means provided to fund research. It is now the sole entity funding public research.

France currently has a well-identified and coordinated Grid research strategy (RRIT and ACI), defined by leading Grid researchers (INRIA, CNRS and universities) and supported by appropriate funding from the Ministry of research, the best example being the national Grid’5000 project. The current trend is to differentiate research Grids, made to support research experiments only, and production grids, which are meant to support applications.

Germany

In 2003/2004, German Grid researchers organized into the national D-Grid consortium which developed a strategy and a research framework for establishing e-Science in Germany. The BMBF adopted the research framework and compiled a first call for proposals. The D-Grid strategy paper (www.d-grid.de) sets a first step toward a coherent German Grid strategy. Formulated by the D-Grid steering committee on behalf of the German D-Grid community, it provides a roadmap on Grid R&D in Germany. This roadmap was put into action with the first call for D-Grid proposals published by the BMBF in autumn 2004. All proposals have been evaluated and those selected for funding willThe first set of five community and one integration project stated in September start in 2005. Additionaly, to the first D-Grid call, a parallel call for proposals on e-Science science projects in information science and digital libraries was issued by the Digital Libraries BMBF Department.

Hungary

The Ministry of Information Technology (IHM) has created a programme for the long-term strategy of the Hungarian e-society. This programme, called as the Hungarian Information Society Strategy mentions Grid technology explicitly as a major pillar of the programme. IHM plays an ever-increasing role in funding Grid activities since 2003 where they started to fund the Hungarian Grid project with the aim of providing the necessary Grid research towards a Hungarian Grid infrastructure. Recently they took over the funding and supervision role of the ClusterGrid initiative. Members of the ministry are expressed their willingness to further support the creation of national Grid vision.

Italy

To provide a solid co-ordination framework and to promote the exploitation of Grid in all possible domains the Italian Minister has launched (September 2004) the 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. 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.

The Netherlands

The Grid Strategy concentrates on application and application-driven computer and computational science research. The philosophy is to develop e-Science generic methodology along the total technology chain where the applications are the drivers of the research. It makes a distinction between a rapid-prototyping environment where new research ideas can be quickly evaluated and a proof-of-concept environment where application cases can be developed and that should be the basis for a later roll-out of Grid technology.

DutchGrid is the platform for Grid Computing and Technology in the Netherlands. Open to all institutions for research and test-bed activities, the goal of DutchGrid is to coordinate the various deployment efforts and to offer a forum for the sharing of experiences on Grid technologies. Next to the DutchGrid Platform, the Grid Forum Netherlands association has been established to promote the Grid in the Netherlands at all levels. Its goal is to bring together the expertise and innovative power of Dutch grid experts, businesses, government, academia and other stakeholders. By creating a focal point for Grid technology in the Netherlands it aims to make knowledge about this breakthrough technology available to Dutch society. Some participants in these organisations took the initiative to establish a new grid infrastructure in the Netherlands called NL++ Grid

Poland

The PIONIER initiative is the main instrument for implementing Grids in Poland. The PIONIER programme envisages the attainment of three basic objectives: developing an information sciences infrastructure for conducting research in science, technology, services and applications; producing and testing pilot services and applications for the information society.

Spain

In order to explore the needs of Grid funding, and to lay out a blueprint for the future development of Grid research in Spain, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) set up a board to explore the situation of Grid-based research (and, more generally, of e-Science) in Spain. As a result, the recently presented White Book on e-Science in Spain details a series of areas in which Grid computing can be of invaluable help, supporting this list with detailed reasons for their selection. The white book lists a series of already existing resources which should be shared among researchers in order to increase productivity, and makes the point that a well-developed Grid infrastructure is key to take advantage of these resources in a transparent, homogeneous manner. It also highlights that the driving force of such a joint effort comes from applications, whose users will greatly benefit from the added computing power and transparent access.

Sweden

In Sweden there is no comprehensive Grid computing funding strategy at this time. The various initiatives have been devised and led by people in Sweden having good understanding of the potential mainly in academia but also in industry.

UK

The UK government has launched the Science and Innovation Investment Framework which is a 10 year forward look for science investment. e-Science and e-infrastructure are a part of that framework. It is too early to know what the specific impact and funding will be for e-Science. However, the government’s long-term commitment to increase the ratio of the total UK R&D spending as a proportion of GDP from the current level of around 1.9% to 2.5% by 2014.

Within the various components of the e-Science Initiative roadmaps are being developed, for example OMII has developed a road map which is available on their web site. In addition, the e-Science Steering Committee is monitoring the developments within the individual Research Councils and planning and proposing the incorporation of e-Science as an embedded part of the activities of all the Research Councils’ funding.