e-Infrastructures in Science and Business

In the last ten years, grid infrastructures have made significant contributions to the scientific, business and political arenas. This is especially true in Europe, where European Union-supported grid initiatives have combined with national grid initiatives to support major scientific research: scientific undertakings otherwise impossible with more traditional computing. More crucially, grids have united—physically and virtually—researchers from around the world, providing the opportunity to seamlessly collaborate.
This pioneering grid experience has given a strategic visibility to the EU’s excellence in information and communication technologies (ICT); well beyond the European borders, grid-powered technologies are considered a major social and political success.
Yet in terms of business and government, the grid experience has been mixed. Several excellent examples of the use of grid technology exist in the finance, automotive and civil protection arenas, yet grids have failed to become the prevailing and dominating technology. This failure stems from issues of cost and complexity of operation, as well as business models and the total cost of ownership.
Therefore, although grids are today a reality—and one capable of answering the needs of vast segments of the research and business communities—they should not be regarded as the panacea to every computing need.
Today’s grid technology, on which most e-Infrastructures are based, is not “the final and perfect solution” for several reasons. First, and most importantly, the requirements of grid users are swiftly evolving, and grid technologies must keep pace or give way to more suitable alternatives. Grid will, however, continue to effectively answer many of the scientific community’s needs, at least for the next few years. Further, grids will remain a concrete, cost-effective alternative to supercomputing, especially for developing countries, where large investments in large computing clusters are most unlikely to occur.
However, if we look at grid technology from a broader perspective, a few limitations that prevent it from achieving universal uptake become apparent. First, its usability is far from being immediate, and, as a consequence, grids remain a niche experience: they simply are not the right solution for an important segment of users, especially when the total cost of ownership is properly taken into account.
Small and medium enterprises as well as private users with a low level of IT knowledge need more “plug-and-play” technologies. This market segment—which is, by the way, interesting to software companies—demands transparent resource provision and cannot afford the long training required to master and manage complex grid infrastructures.
Thus, grids will either evolve or, sooner or later, they will be replaced by a new generation of e-Infrastructures.
The next challenge in e-Infrastructures is two-fold: we must make the most of grid infrastructures and, at the same time, move in new directions. The grid experience is not only creating a strong base for new and next-generation e-Infrastructures, it also offers an immense capital of technical know-how and expertise on which to build.
e-Infrastructures usually evolve alongside scientific and industrial applications; thus, with so many variables involved, it is extremely difficult to foresee their future. On the other hand, newer approaches— the most significant contemporary examples of which are cloud computing and data centres—are focused more on improving usability, increasing cost effectiveness, reducing environmental impact, virtualization of resources, and providing on-demand facilities to end users. In particular, virtualization allows different computing centers, each with different hardware/software configurations, to be operated as a homogeneous environment, connected to the same local network as a single “virtual” computing centre.
In conclusion, decision makers should be aware that their investments in e-Infrastructures have generated—and continue to generate—revenues, both in terms of improving scientific research and progressing technological development. However, they should also be prepared to invest further—and be confident that this investment will further progress to date and involve larger sectors of society.
This progress will always occur, even where technologies change, because what remains is knowledge: a valuable heritage of the Information Society, and the key to wisely driving technology change.