1 Defence, Space & Environment Division Delivery of industrial-strength Grid middleware: establishing an effective European approach EU Workshop Brussels 21 January 2004 DATAMAT Contribution Federico Rossi – Stefano Beco

EU Workshop: Delivery of industrial strength Grid middleware: establishing an effective EU approach - Brussels 21/01/ Defence, Space & Environment Division Rationale for DATAMAT commitment in Grid DATAMAT1600 ICT solutionsinnovation The traditional focus of DATAMAT, an Italian company with over 1600 people developing ICT solutions for several markets, is on innovation, with a long record of international R&D projects followed by successful commercial exploitation. Grid is one of the most promising novelties for the ICT market, representing a fundamental gap in how computing is perceived and used. knowledge business return technology transfer To acquire a specific knowledge of the technology, to understand the potential business return in terms of application and services deployment, also by applying technology transfer across our reference markets, DATAMAT decided in 2000 to participate in the first large Grid Project in Europe – EU-DataGrid – and in the following years to other outstanding initiatives: industrial stabilitycontinuity bridgecommercial exploitation From an industrial viewpoint, it is now important to make new initiatives more focused, in order to achieve stability and continuity, the two main factors to actually bridge research and industry for a possible commercial exploitation of the Grid.

EU Workshop: Delivery of industrial strength Grid middleware: establishing an effective EU approach - Brussels 21/01/ Defence, Space & Environment Division A pan-European Grid infrastructure deployment public sector research deployoperate The relationship with public sector research is fundamental here to deploy and operate a Europe-wide reliable Grid Infrastructure that can also be available to Industry. confidence This will enhance confidence in Grid from those end-user industries that have problems suitable to be solved with the help of Grid, but that still do not have enough evidence that such technology could give benefits on a large scale and in an industrial arena. EGEE As the first important step towards this, we see an initiative like EGEE, which aims at setting up a production-quality infrastructure for (initially) research: such effort should not stop with the end of the project, but should also be supported as a long-lasting initiative.

EU Workshop: Delivery of industrial strength Grid middleware: establishing an effective EU approach - Brussels 21/01/ Defence, Space & Environment Division A European OMII-like action on middleware robuststandard Open Middleware profittechnology On the middleware it is mandatory to set up robust and standard basic building blocks, to be widely used by those who want to play the roles of GASP and GSP, i.e. an Open Middleware, on which to start building value-added services to make profit out of technology. long-lasting initiative European To reach such achievement needs a long-lasting initiative, not just bound to a single (or a series of) project(s), nor to FP6. This must be guaranteed at European level, taking into account and harmonising on- going efforts at national level. Open Middleware Initiative Institute for Europe Therefore, we strongly support the idea of an Open Middleware Initiative Institute for Europe (also ref. to recommendations from first Workshop on EU eInfrastructures initiative).

EU Workshop: Delivery of industrial strength Grid middleware: establishing an effective EU approach - Brussels 21/01/ Defence, Space & Environment Division A technological convergence of middleware on Grid for business On the other hand, it is compulsory that middleware converges on solid business models to be exploited on Grid Infrastructures. enhance This means supporting the efforts required to enhance all technological aspects relevant to business, such as: Security Security, Quality of Service Quality of Service, Service Level Agreement, Trustworthiness over the Grid, Accounting Accounting policies... plus Certification engineering Middleware Certification (as a result of an industrial level engineering process) next generation In few words, to support a next generation of Grid technology to move the focus from Science to Business.

EU Workshop: Delivery of industrial strength Grid middleware: establishing an effective EU approach - Brussels 21/01/ Defence, Space & Environment Division A new generation of Grid-enabled applications The initiatives on application side shall: diffusion test-bed Ease the diffusion of a Grid culture, at most through a generalised test-bed policy aimed at demonstrating in concrete terms the advantages of using it Grid-enable tool kits problem-solving environment Grid-enable classes of applications by developing suitable tool kits and/or porting existing problem-solving environment on Grid contexts Standardiseaccess reduce Standardise as much as possible the access to Grid services and resources, to strongly reduce the dependency on specific middleware implementation and/or specific infrastructure.