Subject: Notes from EGEE-SEEGRID2 Industry Day - Greece
From: Sy Holsinger <[email-masked]>
To: "project-eu-egee-peb (EU-EGEE Peb)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:09:05 +0200
List-Id: <project-eu-egee-peb.cern.ch>

Dear All,

Please find below some notes that I have put together from attending the 
Industry Day in Greece.

Overall, the Industry Day was interesting and the success will again be 
measured in terms of creating awareness of the project and what EGEE is 
doing with Industry and discuss the areas of exploitation for Grid in 
Industry. The Industry Day Application Forum really worked well in 
getting organisers on the right track with the objectives and procedures 
that should be followed in a formal written way of exchanging ideas, 
reporting on progress and trying to ensure the right audience.  Though 
at this point, we do not envisage any new gLite applications or Business 
Associates, we will be following up potential contacts from the day in 
terms of potential speakers or participants at EGEE'07 and networking 
opportunities with those who are working with Grid and Industry and as 
well as the information taken away and the visibility provided to EGEE's 
programme for Industry.

Companies in attendance such as Microsoft provided an interesting point 
of view from a large industry business perspective. Mentioned that 
companies like Google, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay and Microsoft are "Cloud 
Platform" providers. Amazon are basically selling unused part of their 
infrastructure to other companies but keeping complete control of 
resources. This was looked at as a potential area for smaller companies 
to gain computer power needs without integrating their own 
infrastructure which they are unable to afford. Advantages is that is a 
cheap and easy way to do it, and as this definitely opposes what we are 
trying to do as a project is counter balanced by having a complete 
dependence on another company (including if that company were to fold, 
so would your IT capabilities) and not having the freedom or control of 
your resources.

K. Baxevanidis (KB) represented the EC where he highlighted how some of 
the new funding programmes and repeatedly mentioned the areas of 
opportunity for SMEs and drove home the point that for Grid in Industry 
to be successful, high amount of concentration needs to be given to them.

Several Grid projects gave an overview of where their projects were and 
several case studies were presented such as a Romanian project working 
with Aerospace product development and a Greek IT consultant "Exis-IT" 
who is working with telecommunications companies, stressed an important 
opportunity in this field.  Both contacts are currently being followed up.

One company was in attendance that isn't working with Grid and presented 
how he thinks Grid could help. It is a government water control agency 
that tests the quality of water.  They basically have sensors on buoys 
that record data.  All water analysis need to be done by hand. This is a 
small about a data but tedious work. Possibly Grid is a little bit too 
much for what they are currently dong, but there is an opportunity as 
Grid would give them the capacity to run various simulation scenarios 
and make more accurate predictions or more complex simulations.

In turn, KB (without quoting him directly) seemed to agree with 
one-to-one sites visits proposed in EGEE-III and continued in referring 
to NGIs who should play an important role in identifying companies by 
giving them specific industrial tasks.

Follow-up will be noted in the evaluation report as a result of the day.
Any questions or comments are welcome and presentations from the day 
will be uploaded on the website shortly for any referencing for further 
information.

Best wishes,

Sy

-- 
______________________________
Sy Holsinger
Metaware S.p.A.
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+39 050 387 1465 (direct)
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+39 333 588 1270 (cell/mobile)
[email-masked] 

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