The objective of the Interactive European Grid project is the deployment of an advanced Grid-empowered infrastructure in the European Research Area specifically oriented to support the execution of interactive demanding applications. While guaranteeing interoperability with existing large eInfrastructures like EGEE by providing basic common middleware services, the initiative will exploit the expertise generated by the EU CrossGrid project to provide researchers an interactive and simultaneous access to large distributed facilities through a friendly interface with powerful visualization.

Special emphasis will be done on the support for remote interactive collaboration and the reinforcement of the global framework for operation of virtual organizations for research projects in areas like biomedicine, astronomy, environment, or physics. The infrastructure operation will benefit from certification and active security policies, and will include support for significant powerful architectures like multiprocessor or large RAM machines. The consortium involves 13 leading institutions in 7 countries, with significant computing capacity and expertise in grid technology.