JISC

JISC’s executive secretary this week called for more join-up across Europe to ensure researchers and other network users get the most from cloud computing.

Speaking at the largest and most prestigious research networking conference in Europe, Dr Malcolm Read said that a federation of clouds for education and research could be extended across the whole of Europe if conditions were right.

Dr Read highlighted JISC as the funder of the UK’s national research and education network, JANET.  He said: “National networks like JANET are already providing increasingly broad support as they offer data storage, cloud brokering and high performance computing to researchers and other people in education.

“In my opinion there is merit in providing national private clouds for the research and education community.  These existing national networks are obvious candidates for brokering and delivering  such services because they have specialist expertise in procurement and service delivery.”

In his talk Dr Read drew a parallel with the success of the GEANT network, the European infrastructure that reaches 40 countries through interconnectivity with its national research and education network project partners. Around 40 million research and education users benefit from the connection across Europe.

Dr Read concluded: “If national private clouds make sense, then linking such clouds across Europe, and potentially more widely, should also be explored.”

Dr Read was speaking to over 500 decision makers, networking specialists and managers from across the continent at the Terena networking conference in Prague.

JISC’s programme director for the digital infrastructure Rachel Bruce also spoke on cloud this week at a separate event in the UK. Read more about what she said.