Big science teams with big business on cloud computing

A consortium of leading IT providers and three of Europe’s biggest research centres (CERN, EMBL and ESA) have announced a partnership to launch a European cloud computing platform. ‘Helix Nebula ‐ the Science Cloud’, will support the massive IT requirements of European scientists, and become available to governmental organisations and industry after an initial pilot phase.

The partnership is working to establish a sustainable European cloud computing infrastructure, supported by industrial partners, which will provide stable computing capacities and services that elastically meet demand. This pan‐European partnership across academia and industry is in line with the Digital Agenda of the European Commission and will foster innovation for science and create new commercial markets. During a two‐year pilot phase, Helix Nebula will be deployed and tested based on three flagship projects proposed by CERN, EMBL and ESA: to accelerate the search for the elusive Higgs particle, to boost large‐scale genomic analyses in biomedical research, and support research into natural disasters.

The commercial partners in this platform are Atos, Capgemini, CloudSigma, Interoute, Logica, Orange Business Services, SAP, SixSq, Telefonica, Terradue, Thales, The Server Labs and T‐Systems, along with the Cloud Security Alliance, the OpenNebula Project and the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI.eu). They are working together to establish a federated and secure high‐performance computing cloud platform.

Other scientific organisations and service providers are welcome to join Helix Nebula – the Science Cloud. For more details and updates about Helix Nebula – the Science Cloud, please visit us on Facebook, follow‐us on Twitter or send an email to contact@helix‐nebula.eu.