OGF-Europe created to drive grid adoption and innovation

Europe Backs Open Standards to Advance Grid Adoption
PISA, Italy., Feb. 19, 2008 -- The Open Grid Forum (OGF) today announced the creation of OGF-Europe, funded by the European Commission for Mobilizing and Integrating Communities on Grid Standards & Best Practices Globally. OGF-Europe will capitalize on European Commission investments in Grid technologies by driving grid adoption and innovation across Europe in research, government, and industry.

The OGF-Europe project is aligned with OGF’s global mission of pervasive grid adoption through interoperable software standards. Key deliverables include outreach seminars and workshops, adoption challenges and recommendations reports; community surveys, best practice reports and tutorials. OGF-Europe will also coordinate an "Industry Experts" council to better understand how European enterprises are dealing with issues surrounding interoperations and standardisation and to engage them in the core work of OGF.

"We thank the EU commission for their strong show of support for OGF's mission of accelerating Grid adoption through open standards and in recognizing the power of Grid in 21st century economies." said Craig Lee, OGF President. "We are dedicated to meeting the needs of the European market and synchronizing with global priorities across all our key stakeholder communities".

"OGF-Europe is critical to leveraging the significant European investments made in Grid computing into actionable and sustainable results" said Silvana Muscella, the technical coordinator of OGF-Europe and director of OGF.eeig. "OGF-Europe will be essential in bringing enterprise and eScience communities together to break down barriers and foster mainstream Grid adoption."

OGF-Europe's first Community Outreach Seminar is planned for Spring 2008 in the UK. Seminars will take place across the EU and will include innovative ways to reach out to the widest possible audience on issues that are important to Europe. In early June, the OGF23 event will bring the international Grid community to Barcelona for five days of workshops and sessions to continue the work of developing Grid best practices and open standards.

About OGF-Europe
OGF-Europe is led by Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC), technically co-ordinated by OGF.eeig (The European Chapter of the OGF-European Economic Interest Group - Trust-IT Services Ltd, Innotec srl) and consists of eight other partners aiming to achieve its ambitious goals, including the Institute of Graphics and Parallel Processing at the Johannes Kepler University Linz ("GUP"), Austria; Oxford e-Research Centre, University of Oxford UK; Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo Sociedad Anónima Unipersonal Spain; Intellect UK; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Italy; Poznan Supercomputing & Networking Centre Poland; Atos Origin, Spain & l'Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), France. www.ogf.org

The OGF-Europe project (RI-223784) to be supported by the European Commission under the Capacities Specific Programme of the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7) is under negotiation at the time this announcement was released.
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Frequently Asked Questions

Why did OGF initiate the OGF-Europe project?

OGF-Europe was proposed as an opportunity to capitalise on significant European investments in grid and related technologies over the past 8 -10 years. The lack of open standards in the critical area of middleware is one limiting factor in commercial adoption of grid computing to date. The OGF-Europe project seeks to accelerate standards development and adoption, through a vigorous work plan of providing the mechanisms for achieving near-term solutions to known grid adoption challenges resulting in well-defined best practices and global standards. The ability for standards bodies to act in coordination with market requirements is an important factor in speeding adoption. OGF-Europe will focus on the essence of mobilisation and integration of grid communities with the intent of delivering actionable and sustainable results.

How is OGF-Europe structured?

OGF-Europe consists of a consortium of nine partners: geographically well distributed over EU27 and all prominent leaders in Grid activities. These organizations have already engaged in outreach to grid user communities, developed middleware, deployed e-Infrastructures, and worked on developing grid standards and best practices. Their expertise will be leveraged to mobilize additional end-user communities, broaden adoption in early adopter sectors, and facilitate a more aggressive path toward grid up-take across Europe.

Is this a return to the old Grid Forum Europe, which merged with US- and Asia-based Grid Forums in 2001 to form the Global Grid Forum?

While on the surface this might appear to be a “back to the future” scenario, in reality it is quite different. First of all, since the late 1990’s, the European Commission and numerous national governments have invested millions of euro to architect, build, and manage grid infrastructures and applications. The OGF-Europe project, while near-term in nature, is specifically aimed at leveraging these investments to increase up-take not just in research but in commercial and small-medium enterprises. As standards development organizations like OGF grow and begin to have a more mature portfolio of standards, it is not uncommon for national or regional chapters to be launched to perform the “last-mile” adoption of those standards in their respective geographies. The launch of the OGF Europe chapter and the OGF-Europe project represents a milestone in the maturity of the grid industry in that adoption globally is dependent upon concerted outreach and adoption efforts within regions or nations. OGF-Europe is uniquely positioned to represent OGF’s global standards and best practices as well as advances in grid technologies and usage to enterprises of all types across Europe.

How will OGF-Europe and OGF-Global coordinate activities?

OGF-Europe and OGF will coordinate their activities through the “European Chapter of the Open Grid Forum E.E.I.G.” (OGF.eeig, for short) which is a European-based legal entity (specifically, a European Economic Interest Grouping) designed to extend the OGF model to Europe in alignment with OGF’s mission, strategy and leadership to stimulate, co-ordinate and harmonise networked actions across Europe and globally.

OGF.eeig is governed by an internal regulation natively ensuring synchronisation mechanisms with the OGF and managing structures to execute on expected synergies in Europe. More specifically, OGF.eeig has the mission of: (1) expanding active participation of European public and private individuals and organisations in the work of OGF; (2) channeling European achievements, priorities, requirements and policies into OGF’s global strategy for standardization and grid adoption; (3) delivering global Grid advancements, best practices and specifications to European scientific and commercial entities. According to its Article of Association, OGF.eeig must re-invest all possible profits in the activities of the EEIG specified in the mission summarised above.

What are the key deliverables of OGF-Europe?

OGF-Europe, across its 24-month duration, will focus on the achievement of 8 main objectives:

• Provide European structural support to building Open Standards
• Contribute to the OGF Technical Strategy & Roadmap Report covering European perspectives & outcomes
• Document challenges on standardisation with Research & Industry vertical markets through workshops
• Mobilise e-Infrastructure Communities on the business value of Grids & support the take-up of Grid adoption
• Introduce in depth tutorial activities around the Community Outreach Seminars & OGF events in Europe
• Create European surveys on building & operating e-Infrastructures within key European communities
• Deliver two international OGF events organised around Europe providing a platform to exchange knowledge, showcase results, display technological and business demonstrations
• Facilitate the documentation of Grid best practices from European-based R&D & Enterprise-based projects and initiatives which are capitalised for Grid adoption purposes

Major tangible results of OGF-Europe comprise: 3 reports supporting OGF Technical & Strategic Roadmap, 2 survey reports on trends & Grid practices, 4 workshops on challenges on standardisation issues, 4 Grid adoption challenge reports; 6 Community outreach seminars including 4 in-depth tutorials and 6 Community best practice reports. Additionally, 2 OGF-Europe international events will be held, including OGF23, hosted by Barcelona Supercomputing Centre & co-located with BEinGRID industry days and OGF25 planned in collaboration with the EGEE User Forum in Spring 2009.

What activities can we anticipate as the OGF-Europe chapter begins operations?

The scheduled activities as OGF-Europe unfolds in the first six months (started in February) are the following:
1) Monthly eAnnouncements on results of the project posted on the website starting immediately
2) Two analysis surveys will be carried out by April to analyse priority issues and to sort them into community practice and/or standardisation tasks. The surveys will be worked in parallel with the GIN and enterprise activities
3) A series of 4 concise and focused workshops (the first will be at OGF23) aimed at enhancing the presence and influence of OGF in research and industry vertical end-user markets and corporate data environments.
4) Two international events starting with OGF23 in Barcelona 2-6 June 2008. The second event in collaboration with EGEE in Spring 2009
5) Community Outreach seminars (the first planned for the Spring in the UK) organized on different topics to educate IT decision makers on the business value of Grids

What Grid adoption issues will OGF-Europe begin tackling?

We see the growing demands for analyzing massive data as one of today's major points of discussion. The Call for Participation for OGF23 sets aside a part of the agenda to cover these issues and may refer to the results in the recommendations reports delivered post event. We hope this type of information will entice user communities such as those using digital repositories to realize the importance of enabling interoperability between providers and this is achieved through the development of best practices and open standards.

For more information about OGF-Europe plans and activities, visit www.ogf-europe.eu