Glenna Project has started: Let’s create a Nordic cloud
The Glenna project was launched 3 November in Arlanda, Stockholm. Project Manager Dan Still invited a total of 13 participants from the five Nordic countries to attend the kick-off meeting.
This November Monday was all about getting to know each other and gaining an overview of the project and its goals. Gudmund Høst gave the welcoming remarks, and Dan introduced the project directive. This was followed by presentations of the cloud activities in each Nordic country, with use cases being provided in the afternoon: Tomas Linden presented Scientific-application-as-a-service; Aleksi Kallio presented Chipster in the cloud; after which Pål Pettersen provided a financial/administrative review.
Sharing data benefits all
“The sharing of the cloud resources in the Nordic countries paves the way for an easier form of collaboration for researchers. Instead of moving large amounts of data between countries, an analysis can be carried out where the data are. Sharing also evens out the peaks and valleys between resource demand and capacity at the individual sites/countries. Sharing best practices for cloud environment administration will reduce the work needed in each country. Collaboration and information-sharing also improve security and broaden the opportunities for development. So let’s create a Nordic cloud,” said Dan Still.
The Glenna cloud will create a secure marketplace that promotes “fair-share” services for scientific collaboration within the Nordic countries. Glenna will support multinational research programmes by making it easier to use and fund services provided by several national resource centres. In addition, the Nordic cloud marketplace will facilitate the implementation of projects with external users (industry and non-Nordic users).
The Glenna project will be designed as a coordination hub for and interface towards European initiatives for federated cloud infrastructure development and deployment.
Based on a common NeIC initiative, the Glenna project will create a federated service for Nordic users, and a connection point for larger international collaborations. The project is proposed to run in phases, with an initial phase to investigate the overall scope and limitations for its operation, and potential for collaboration within the Nordic community as well as on the international (EU focus) level.
“We will focus on user needs (not just from Life Sciences), and get input from a wide variety of user groups. And then we will investigate requirements relating to policies and security, and how these are coordinated and combined,” Dan Still explains.
The Glenna project will run for two-years, and is scheduled to be concluded by the end of August 2016. The project has a budget of EUR 1.25 million, and participation comprising 135 person months.