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SIENA & NIST
SIENA’s objectives are complementary to the role of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in cloud standards, guidance and technology. NIST partners with the EC and SIENA specifically in these areas. SIENA & NIST have developed a working relationship to help exchange efforts in common needs, recommendations and next steps.

Experts

SIENA engages with major international experts and stakeholders to forge community agreement on best practices and standards for distributed computing.

This is done through the Industry Expert Group (IEG), the Special Liaison Group (SLG) and the Roadmap Editorial Board (REB) made up of international experts.

Industry Expert Group - IEG

SIENA coordinates an Industry Expert group to facilitate the project in its aims to interact with European and International enterprises to understand best practices emphasizing DCI standards and interoperability. The IEG also has an important opportunity to demonstrate how Europe, which has invested heavily in distributed computing, can play a leading role in showcasing how clouds can be built on the current grid infrastructures through an open approach, in order to strengthen Europe’s position in the field.

SIENA IEG has been built following the positive experience of OGF-Europe: the distinguished panel of experts who formed the IEG during the OGF-Europe project [2008-2010] achieved excellent recognition from the community. Working on a voluntary basis, the group evaluated how the adoption of distributed computing and particularly cloud computing is transforming enterprise IT in Europe and the potential of e-Infrastructures beyond the research domain. The IEG played an instrumental role in shaping the agenda of the Cloudscape Workshop series (January 2009, February 2010 and March 2011, Brussels) with all workshops attended by over 100 people from business, government and research.

Special Liaison Group - SLG

To Special Liaison Group helps support and coordinate the areas of activity of the project around grids to clouds standards. Input gathered from the SLG steer the SIENA initiative, ensuring an international perspective on activities for driving forward the adoption of standards and developments for increased interoperability, and aligning it with the changing global landscape, specifically as far as the relation with ongoing work in standards groups is concerned.

SIENA promotes close collaboration and underpins interoperability efforts with regards to EGI and similar infrastructures in other parts of the world, such as NAREGI and the Open Science Grid (OSG), while promoting Europe’s policy for open source technologies and adherence to open standards. To this end, SIENA evaluates current and future trends in distributed computing in eResearch and e-Infrastructures by supporting efforts towards interoperability and standards in Europe and globally by ensuring effective interaction and cross-fertilization with policy bodies and EC projects.

Roadmap Editorial Board – REB

The SIENA Roadmap on Grid and Cloud Standards for e-Science and Beyond is produced in close collaboration with the European Commission and the DCI projects and serves as a guideline for the definition of a preparatory roadmap to help gauge the viewpoints from the current DCI projects in alignment with the viewpoints from the SDOs in relation to Grids and Clouds emerging and offer some common ideas for future actions.

Due to the complexity of coordinating the roadmap the SIENA Consortium has set up a Roadmap Editorial Board (REB) which plays an essential contributional and editorial role in writing the SIENA Roadmap by ensuring that the content is aligned with EC, European and National Initiatives, as well as the EGI_InSPIRE roadmap.

A REB chair has been nominated to drive the discussions forward, identify the most probable evolution scenarios of the Grid and Cloud standards, the most important drivers in this process and how these drivers could be influenced (e.g. through policies, research work etc.) in order to drive developments in one or another direction. The group is made up of a representative and a deputy from each of the DCI projects as well as the chair of the IEG and the SLG.