INDUSTRY

The Enabling Grids for E-SciencE (EGEE) project closed on 30 April 2010, having nurtured innovative, worldclass research across Europe and around the globe. EGEE-III brought together a computing infrastructure, software tools and services to support more than 10,000 scientific researchers across more than 170 research communities.

Grids bring together computing and storage resources located in, owned and operated by different organisations located around the world. Connecting securely through the GÉANT internet network, grids share supercomputer power and data storage capacity, creating an interwoven resource for the large-scale, compute and data intensive grand challenges facing us today – such as climate change, health and sustainable energy.

EGEE’s achievements grew from the pioneering European DataGrid project, which started in 2001 and developed continuously through the three successive project phases of EGEE. By the close of EGEE-III, the project has created the largest collaborative production grid infrastructure in the world, including 250,000 computer processing cores, collaboratively hosted by more than 300 centres, running around 15 million computer tasks every month.

Using EGEE, scientists have been able to do more intensive work on a larger scale, and get results in a shorter time than would otherwise have been possible. EGEE has also fostered collaborations within Europe and worldwide, allowing Europe to stand out on the world stage. These collaborations will last for years to come and are now being developed within the new European Grid Infrastructure, EGI, which brings together National Grid Infrastructures under the coordination of a new organisation, EGI.eu. The European Commission is providing initial co-funding for EGI through the four year EGI-InSPIRE project, which started on 1 May 2010, coordinated by EGI.eu.

"Distributed Computing Infrastructures have matured at an incredible rate and EGEE has been a driving force in making this happen,” says Bob Jones, EGEE Project Director. “In 2000 I think it would have been a brave call to say that Europe would have a sustainable production grid infrastructure built on a federation of national grid infrastructures in place by 2010. We are glad to see EGI embody the results of a decade of work and I am certain it has a bright future in contributing to the European Research Area and serving the ESFRI projects."

“The establishment of EGI.eu represents a new phase for the European Grid Infrastructure,” says Steven Newhouse, EGI.eu Director. “Sustainability is key for supporting the next generation of data intensive  science projects. EGI, through its foundation on strong National Grid Infrastructures, will provide the coordination necessary for a secure, reliable and integrated infrastructure in Europe.”

EGEE is also pleased to report a successful final project review, which took place in June. The reviewers commended the project on the scale of the infrastructure it had built up over the years and the number and diversity of the participants across Europe.

“We think this has been an outstandingly successful project,” said John Martin, Chair of the EC review panel. “EGEE has been an EC flagship project which has achieved a high level of visibility and impact in Europe and beyond.”

“EGEE has been a guiding light for a number of projects,” concluded Enric Mitjana, EC Project Officer for EGEE. “The structuring effect EGEE has had on the e-Infrastructure landscape in Europe and beyond is much appreciated by the Commission.”

EGEE would like to thank the European Commission for its funding and support throughout the EGEE programme over the years and for expressing its confidence in EGI through the EGI-InSPIRE project. As the EGEE project closes, and the EGI-InSPIRE project gets underway, the infrastructure and knowledge EGEE has created stands to leave a lasting legacy for the European Research Area and the world of e-science.