This roadmap assesses the situation, identifies issues, and makes recommendations regarding the adoption and evolution of open standards-based interoperable grid and cloud computing infrastructure (e-infrastructure) to support research in Europe. The vision for such a European e-infrastructure is to empower productivity of research communities through ubiquitous, trusted, and easy trans-national access to services for data, computation, communication and collaborative work. Some considerations in this roadmap apply also to computing in industry and the public sector.

SIENA is funded European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme (FP7). The goal of SIENA, Standards and Interoperability for eInfrastructure implemeNtation initiAtive, is to accelerate and coordinate the adoption and evolution of interoperable distributed computing infrastructures through engagement with industry, standards development organisations (SDOs) and major stakeholders to forge community agreements on best practices and standards for distributed computing.

SIENA is the first initiative to bring to the same table standardization bodies to support the analysis of open standards-based interoperable grid and cloud computing infrastructures. The SDOs that have contributed include: the Open Grid Forum (OGF), the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE SA), the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), the Organization for the Adoption of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), and International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T).

The primary focus of the SIENA initiative is European electronic infrastructure for research. We therefore, take into consideration the points of view of both the people responsible for infrastructure creation and operation, such as service and application developers, and the “end users”, for example, researchers in science, the arts and humanities. The focus on standards and interoperability and the offer of services through European grid and cloud infrastructures will benefit the education sector, and will also be relevant for e-government and commercial enterprises that can take advantage of the substantial research background that underlies most e-infrastructures.

SIENA Roadmap Annexes
The annexes provide supplementary information on initiatives and issues broadly applicable to the SIENA roadmap.
Download the SIENA Roadmap Annexes here.