Speaker
Describe the scientific/technical community and the scientific/technical activity using (planning to use) the EGEE infrastructure. A high-level description is needed (neither a detailed specialist report nor a list of references).
Two industrial grid projects are planning to use the EGEE
infrastructure in
addition to their own regional infrastructure based on Globus
Toolkit 2 and 4.
These projects provide hardware resources and software services
for small and
medium enterprises (SME) in the scope of bio-informatics (RUGBI)
and of
simulation of polymer injection (OpenPlast).
Describe the added value of the Grid for the scientific/technical activity you (plan to) do on the Grid. This should include the scale of the activity and of the potential user community and the relevance for other scientific or business applications
These activities require a huge amount of computing power and
expensive
software. The associated investment is not always made beneficial
for such
enterprises, because these activities often occur in the context
of intermittent
short-term projects.
The grid enables SME to improve the accuracy of their
computations and
simulations with a reasonable cost, by sharing hardware and software
resources.
Report on the experience (or the proposed activity). It would be very important to mention key services which are essential for the success of your activity on the EGEE infrastructure.
Job submission, file transfer and storage. No need for special
services, but the
core services have to be secure and efficient.
With a forward look to future evolution, discuss the issues you have encountered (or that you expect) in using the EGEE infrastructure. Wherever possible, point out the experience limitations (both in terms of existing services or missing functionality)
The main issue is security, especially privacy. Indeed, for SME,
confidentiality is
a concern not only for data, but also for any information that
would give some
hints to guess what the enterprise is working on and what its
strategy is. Even
log messages may contain sensitive information for example.
Other important issues are the cost of deployment and operation
of grid
components on SME sites, and their capability to integrate with
site local
policies and software.
