European Commission invests in grid technologies research
The European Commission is launching 23 new research projects on 'grid' technologies, on 19 September, funded to the tune of €78 million under the Information Society Technologies budget line of the Sixth Framework Programme. Grid technologies connect computers, data repositories, software programmes, scientific instruments and other devices, bringing together users from around the world and from different companies in a single, 'virtual' enterprise in which users can share knowledge instantly and easily access and store shared data. Grid technology also gives users the chance to exploit the processing power of all computers connected to the grid. Industry sectors which benefit from EU-funded research in this area include the automotive, aeronautics, financial, pharmaceutical and media sectors. European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding, is in no doubt of the value of grid technologies to the European economy. 'Grid and service-oriented architectures are crucial enabling technologies for economy-wide productivity and growth,' she said. 'They will make today's information and communication technology infrastructures more flexible and agile, enabling businesses to adapt and innovate faster. Grid technologies, for example, enable competing manufacturers with common suppliers to develop fully integrated engineering environments that protect the commercial interests of all parties and boost their collective competitiveness.' Currently grid technology is still in a transition phase, from research and academic use to wider applications in the business world. The BEinGRID (Business Experiments in GRID) project, has been awarded a €15.7 million grant, aims to facilitate this process and promote a wider uptake of the technology in the workplace. BEinGRID will do this by running 18 trials of grid technology in a range of sectors. The resulting case studies will hopefully be a source of inspiration to other companies. 'The business experiments have been selected from different key sectors as the best candidates for being GRID success stories and we expect a tremendous business impact on the European ICT industry,' said Diego Pavia from Atos Origin SAE, the organisation that coordinates BEinGRID. British Telecom (BT) is involved in a BEinGRID trial to exploit grid technologies in the field of internet-based, multi-player gaming. 'We are pleased to see increased support from the European Commission to foster the adoption of web services and grid technologies in multiple business sectors,' said Matt Bross, BT's Chief Technology Officer. 'As BT grows its converged networked services business, such initiatives contribute to meeting our vision of becoming the world leader in secure and high-performing network-centric ICT solutions.' Another project which benefits from this latest round of funding is XtreemOS, which receives €14.2 million. The aim of XtreemOS is to design, implement, evaluate and distribute an open source grid operating system (called XtreemOS) which will support virtual organisations. Based on the popular Linux open source software, XtreemOS would be installed on all machines participating in the grid. By releasing users from dealing with the complex resource management issues of a grid environment, XtreemOS will make participating in a virtual organisation much easier. Developing grid technology is a high priority for the Commission; between 2002 and 2006 it spent €130 million on research alone, and a further €250 million on deployment. The sector will continue to receive significant support under the Seventh Framework Programme.