EGEE gets down to business

NICE Italy will develop its GENIUS Grid Portal and EnginFrame FrameWork, to make them compatible with the EGEE middleware gLite. “NICE has always been a strong supporter of the EGEE project right from the first phase,” says Beppe Ugolotti, CEO of NICE, Italy. “As part of this collaboration and cooperation effort we are proud to become one of the first participants in the Business Associate programme, which gives us a valuable channel to make significant technical contributions and leverage off the considerable expertise built up in Grid computing within the EGEE project. On the other hand, as one of the leaders in the commercial Grid sector, NICE has much experience and knowledge to offer to the EGEE project, especially as it aims to attract more industrial and business users.”

Platform computing will work with EGEE to improve the interoperability of the gLite middleware with LSF, so that resources connected through the LSF local resources management system can be better exploited on the Grid. “Platform is excited about collaborating with EGEE to apply our Grid computing technologies to EGEE's Grid in support of diverse research and business applications,” says Prof. Songnian Zhou, CEO of Platform. “The combination of Platform's production-proven Grid products and the innovative Grid infrastructure and applications developed by EGEE will lead to a world-leading production Grid across Europe and the world in advance of science and research, and establish a standard for the broad adoption of Grid by the industries.”

PricewaterhouseCoopers will collaborate with EGEE on issues related to Grid Security contributing their extensive experience in risk management. “The potential security issues in Grid computing need to be addressed early and properly managed,” says Paul Wang, Senior Manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Switzerland. “Having the right approach to the management of the diverse risks in a multi-domain Grid will be one of the key success factors of this new technology.”

EGEE is working with business players in the Grid arena on many different levels and areas, ensuring effective two-way communication and pro-active discussions. “EGEE is now in a position that it has much to offer to business,” says Project Director Dr Bob Jones. “The EBA programme is an important component in our strategy for the take-up of our work by business and industry, providing a framework in which companies can confidently move ahead with the adoption of Grid technologies.”

Technology transfer is one of the key goals of projects funded by the European Commission. EGEE, as the flagship Grid project in the 6th framework programme, will through its collaboration with industry pave the way to making Grids the technology of the future for business in all sectors.

The different channels the project has set up for working with Industry are presented at the EGEE’06 conference, which for the first time included a dedicated two-day business track with over twenty industry and research experts geared to introducing their recent developments of Corporate Grid adoption in the context of major IT trends such as: security, standardisation and virtualisation issues. Representatives from the financial, automotive, petroleum and public administration sectors and more have been selected to analyse how Grids, as part of the global evolution of corporate information technology, will benefit industry in the future. Special emphasis is also put on industrial applications who want to use the EGEE infrastructure and middleware, making sure that the industry-specific requirements are fed into the project on an equal footing with those from the scientific applications.