16 June 2003Serenate Workshop, Bad Nauheim Report on the networking needs of users in the European research community comments by Marie-Madeleine Martinet (Paris-Sorbonne)

16 June 2003Serenate Workshop, Bad Nauheim the quantitative increase of performance has caused qualitative changes in research New research activities made possible by high-performance networks The move to services

16 June 2003Serenate Workshop, Bad Nauheim New research activities made possible by high-performance networks (p.3) Collaborative projects (pp.8, 27) which would not exist without partnerships, have been made possible by the networks this favours transdisciplinary work

16 June 2003Serenate Workshop, Bad Nauheim The move to services (p.16) This has caused “growth in user expectations” which “have evolved beyond the provision of pure bandwith towards the supply of more complex services” ; the report stresses the “need for enhanced services” (p.9) according to subject-fields ;

16 June 2003Serenate Workshop, Bad Nauheim The move to services a) if there is a requirement for a “flexible approach to service provision” (p.16), new expertise is needed; not only networks but also software, services etc This involves the possibility of fragmentation or segmentation of needs, and hence difficulty of providing for increasingly varied needs

16 June 2003Serenate Workshop, Bad Nauheim The move to services it is however notable that certain developing requirements are to be found in apparently unrelated disciplines e.g. remote visualisation and simulation are required in astronomy, building, geography, medicine …(pp.12-13) so that similarities of development patterns might link apparently unrelated disciplines rather than traditionally neighbouring ones; it should still be considered whether they have similar requirements, quantitatively in scale and qualitatively, and so whether similar models can serve for all

16 June 2003Serenate Workshop, Bad Nauheim The move to services b) this involves campus-related issues: not only technical but also organisational requirements in personnel (summary 4); it is necessary to set up a dialogue structure and an organisational structure between IT staff and academic end-users taking into account rapid developments and the diversity of subject-specific needs