SIENA Roadmap
“International standardisation efforts will also have a huge impact on cloud computing. Open specifications are a key in creating competitive and flourishing markets that deliver what customers need. Europe can play a big role here – building on, for example, the SIENA initiative and its development of a "standardisation roadmap for clouds and grids for e-Science and beyond".
Source: Brussels, 22 March 2011, SPEECH/11/199 “European Cloud Computing Strategy needs to aim high”, by Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Digital Agenda
The Distributed Computing Infrastructure (DCI) landscape has developed exponentially in recent years, with Grid computing continuing to be a prized component in large-scale computing for science. Meanwhile, the dynamic provisioning and scalability of Cloud computing is seeing rapid adoption in industry, with researchers looking at these benefits to adapt to their own resource-heavy needs. This diversity of technology, services, providers and users brings the need for their close collaboration. SIENA works with the DCI community and industry leaders to keep Europe’s scientific communities supported with the e-Infrastructures they need.
It is expected that a standards and policy framework for distributed computing will be defined over the next two to three years ensuring fair competition and, from a European perspective, adherence to the EC’s strategic priorities for e-Infrastructures full potential.
The SIENA Roadmap on Distributed Computing Infrastructure for e-Science and Beyond in Europe – May 2012
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.
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 on Grid and Cloud Standards for e-Science and Beyond – March 2011
The first iteration of the SIENA European Roadmap on Grid and Cloud Standards for e-Science and Beyond was released at Cloudscape III, 15 - 16 March 2011, Brussels.
The document gives insight into e-Infrastructure requirements and technology, as well as the invaluable role that standardization and interoperability have for the successful application of distributed computing. The importance of international co-ordination is also highlighted with important links to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) helping to build coordination on the development of standards for Cloud computing. Finally, the roadmap sets out a number of recommendations including the undertaking of determined and targeted efforts to discourage fragmentation, and to encourage and participate in the development of an adequate set of structures - both organizational (e.g. governance, single sign on, etc.) and technical (e.g. open standards, security, software, etc.) to ensure the interoperability of future European e-infrastructures for research and e-government.
The document also includes use cases and position papers collected for the Cloudscape III event, serving primarily as a sample of the cloud computing landscape. The challenges highlighted were discussed at Cloudscape III and will be fed into the second iteration of the Roadmap which will be released in October 2011.