Board of Sponsors meeting launches CERN openlab's next phase
On the 8th and 9th of May, the CERN openlab Board of Sponsors gathered at CERN to officially close phase III of the collaboration, and to launch its fourth phase, which will run through 2012 to the end of 2014.
Welcomed by the Head of CERN openlab, Bob Jones, delegates from industry member companies and CERN management joined CERN openlab staff to review the third phase. Various talks highlighted key achievements, and celebrated the positive impact on the development of Grid and computing services which underpin the LHC. They also looked forward to future plans for development.
The fourth phase of CERN openlab will address topics critical to the continued growth of the CERN scientific programme, such as cloud computing, business analytics, the next generation of hardware, and security for myriads of network devices. The industry investment over the three years of the fourth phase represents more than eight million Swiss Francs.
Rolf Heuer, CERN Director General chaired a Round-Table discussion at the end of the day with the heads of delegations from the openlab partner companies, HP, Intel, Oracle, Intel, and Huawei as a contributor for a year, and thanked all CERN openlab partners and contributors for their continued support. He emphasized that the fourth phase of CERN openlab will be instrumental in addressing the growing computing challenges posed by increases in LHC luminosity and energy in future.
The second day brought an opportunity to widen the scope of the meeting, showcasing the scientific diversity of CERN, future needs of the experiments, and exploring how CERN openlab fits into the broader picture.
CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolluci spoke on the scientific programme of CERN, Pierre Vande Vyvre, Project Leader of the ALICE Data Acquisition Project, gave an experiment’s-eye-view of CERN’s computing needs and how they will change as the LHC’s energy and luminosity increase. A key development in processing data from the LHC and its experiments will be the creation of the CERN' s remote data centre, plans for which were outlined in a talk by Wayne Salter, Computing Facilities Group Leader in the CERN IT Department.
Bernd Panzer-Steindel, CTO and resource manager in the CERN computer centre, turned the focus towards strategic direction outilining how CERN is moving towards an agile infrastructure making sure of reasoned virtualisation. This presentation was followed-up by a discussion and wrap-up session. Bob Jones concluded: “CERN openlab has established itself as a reference thanks to the excellent relationship and on-going commitment of all partners and contributors during the past 11 years. The combined knowledge and dedication of the engineers from CERN and the companies have produced remarkable results. The launch of this fourth phase is an exciting time for CERN openlab and I am confident that we will be equally successful in the future.”
The press release is available to you, as well as a video presenting the CERN openlab activities and the group picture taken at the occasion of this first CERN openlab IV annual Board of Sponsors meeting, in the presence of the CERN Director-General, the partners, and the openlab team members.
Details of the event are available to delegates on Indico.
