Today
an 18 strong consortium of companies and research organisations announced a
partnership to launch a European cloud computing platform. It will support the
requirements of European scientific research, as well as government
organisations and commercial enterprises. The primary objectives of the
partnership are twofold: to accelerate the search for the elusive Higgs
particle, genomic analysis in biomedical research, and research of natural
disasters; and to kick-start cloud computing within Europe.
The
biggest names in the ICT industry have come together to offer a range of
services in an open standards-based framework addressing European data privacy
concerns on a large-scale.
By
showing how cloud computing can help solve some of societies biggest
challenges, the European cloud-based scientific
e-infrastructure will open the way for public organisations to profit from
commercial cloud services.
The
initiative is called Helix Nebula - the Science
Cloud, named after the
large planetary nebula sometimes referred to as the ‘Eye of
God'. Its goal is to ignite the European market for cloud computing services as
proposed in a
strategic plan and
deployment started in January 2012.
Helix
Nebula - the Science Cloud creates a pan-European
partnership across academia and industry, enabling innovation for science and
creating new commercial markets.
Initially,
three flagship use cases are being developed to demonstrate the impact Helix
Nebula - the Science Cloud will have on science, allowing for
experimentation and testing while scaling-up the cloud infrastructure.
First,
CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, will have access to more computing
power to process data from the
ATLAS experiment at its
Large Hadron Collider
accelerator.
"CERN's
computing capacity needs to keep-up with the data coming from the Large Hadron
Collider and we see Helix Nebula - the Science
Cloud as a great way of working with industry to meet this challenge," said
Frédéric Hemmer, head of CERN's IT department.
Second,
the
European
Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is setting up a new service to
simplify the analysis of large genomes, such as those from mammals, allowing a
deeper insight into evolution and biodiversity across a range of organisms.
"The
quantities of genomic sequence data are vast and the needs for high performance
computing infrastructures and bioinformatics expertise to analyse these data
pose a challenge for many laboratories. EMBL's novel cloud-based
whole-genome-assembly and annotation pipeline involves expertise from the
Genomics Core facility in Germany, EMBL-EBI's institute at the
Wellcome Trust Genome Campus in Cambridge
UK, and EMBL Heidelberg's IT Services. It will help scientists,
inside and outside EMBL, to overcome these hurdles and provision the right
infrastructure on demand," said Rupert Lueck, head of IT services at EMBL.
Third,
the
European Space Agency
(ESA), in partnership with the
Centre
National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France,
and the
German
Aerospace Center (DLR) is
collaborating with the
National Research Council (CNR)
in Italy, to create an Earth observation platform focusing on earthquake and
volcano research.
This
undertaking is done in the framework of the
Group on Earth Observations
(GEO), a voluntary partnership of governments and international organisations.
Volker Liebig, ESA Director for Earth observation programmes, said, "Helix
Nebula - the Science Cloud is a partnership with the
potential to support an utmost exploitation of ESA satellite data, as well as
to bring other communities on board to better understand the geophysical
phenomena of our planet."
All
three flagship applications will be deployed during a 2 year pilot phase. The
commercial partners are Atos, Capgemini, CloudSigma, Interoute, Logica,
Orange Business Services, SAP, SixSq, Telefonica, Terradue, Thales, The Server
Labs and T Systems, along with the Cloud Security Alliance, the OpenNebula
Project and the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI.eu). They will all work
together to establish a federated and secure high-performance computing cloud
platform.
This
pilot stage represents a crucial proof of concept between big science and
industry. Addressing the legal and policy constraints for the management of
scientific data by commercial partners will lead to a sustainable European
digital cloud market.
Helix
Nebula - the Science Cloud supports Europe's Digital
Agenda as outlined by European Commission
vice-president Neelie Kroes during her speech about setting
up a European Cloud Partnership to the
World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, in January 2012. She said, "it is a true win-win: the Cloud market
will grow, bringing opportunities for existing suppliers and new entrants. And
Cloud buyers, including the public sector, will buy more with less and become
more efficient."
More
scientific organisations and service providers will be welcome to join Helix
Nebula - the Science Cloud in the near future. For more
details about Helix Nebula - the Science Cloud and how to become a consortium
member, please visit us
on Facebook, follow-us on Twitter (@HelixNebulaSC)
or send an email to
helixnebula-contact@mailman.egi.eu.
For
more information, visit
http://www.cloudsigma.com/en/about-us/press-releases/211
About CERN
CERN,
the European laboratory for particle physics, is the world's leading laboratory
for particle physics. Its headquarters are in Geneva. At present, its Member
States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland,
France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland,
Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Romania
is a candidate for accession. Israel is an Associate Member in the pre-stage to
membership. The European Commission, India, Japan, the Russian Federation,
Turkey, UNESCO and the United States of America, all have Observer status.
About EMBL
The
European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is a basic research institute
sponsored by public research funding from 20 member states (Austria, Belgium,
Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel,
Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland and the United Kingdom) and associate member state Australia. Research
at EMBL is conducted by approximately 85 independent groups covering molecular
biology. The laboratory has five units: the main laboratory in Heidelberg,
outstations in Hinxton (the European Bioinformatics Institute), Grenoble,
Hamburg, and Monterotondo near Rome. The cornerstones of EMBL's mission are: to
perform basic research in molecular biology; to train scientists, students and
visitors at all levels; to offer vital services to scientists in Member States;
to develop new instruments and methods in the life sciences, and to actively
engage in technology transfer activities. Around 190 students are enrolled in
EMBL's International PhD programme. Additionally, the laboratory offers a
platform for dialogue with the general public through various science
communication activities such as lecture series, visitor programmes and the
dissemination of scientific achievements.
About ESA
The
European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe's gateway to space. Its mission is to
shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that investment
in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
ESA is an international organisation with 19 Member States. By coordinating the
financial and intellectual resources of its members, it can undertake
programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country.
ESA's
job is to draw up the European space programme and carry it through. ESA's
programmes are designed to find out more about Earth, its immediate space
environment, our Solar System and the Universe, as well as to develop
satellite-based technologies and services, and to promote European industries.
ESA also works closely with space organisations outside Europe.