GLOSSARY

e-Infrastructure
The new generation of integrated ICT-based infrastructure. E-Infrastructures, which exploit and seamlessy interconnect several separate components and layers, such as networks, supercomputers and other computing resources, storage, and other remote resources.

eScience
An innovative approach to research, thanks to the use of advanced technologies of communication and regardless to geographical location of instruments, resources and last but not least, brains. Today, the paradigm is used in several application fields: Astrophysics, High Energy Physics, Computational Chemistry, Biomedicine, Earth Sciences, Metereology, Environmental Sciences but also Finance, Cognitive Sciences and Archaeology.

Grid
Grids are a set of services over the Internet, allowing geographically dispersed users to share computer power, data storage capacity and remote instrumentation. The term Grid was coined in the mid-1990’s to indicate the “coordinated resource sharing and problem solving in dynamic, multi institutional virtual organisations”. Although Grids are still in a prototype phase, experts believe that they will have a dramatic impact, comparable to WWW, in the next few years.

Middleware
A software layer able to manage and allocate resources in an optimal way to all users and applications that need them, just like the Operative System does with programs running on your PC.

NREN – National Research and Education Network
A NREN is a unique organization that plans, manages and operates the IP telecommunication network infrastructure devoted to R&E in a country. They implement the network requirements of the scientific and academic community and are the privileged partner for dealing with Telecom operators and provider of apparatuses on their behalf.

NGI – National Grid Initiative
An NGI is an organization that coordinates on a national basis the Grid projects and initiative and is entitled to deal with counterparts worldwide on themes such as standardization and interoperability of middleware and procedures. It is the NRENequivalent at a Grid level.