The Cloud Provisioning and Service-sharing Groupware Standards is the task of Work Package 3 (WP3) which is lead by RedCLARA.

WP3 Participants are: GÉANT, RENATA, RNP, REUNA, CEDIA, CUDI, RENATER, GRNET, CESNET, CKLN, UbuntuNet Alliance, WACREN, ASREN, TEIN*CC, NITC, NIIFI, CSIR, SURFnet.

WP3 Objectives: 

• To develop a model for inter-operation between NREN cloud application markets of participating world regions, based on cloud provisioning and taking advantage of applications developed and run by NRENs across different continents to create a model for a worldwide application market for collaboration tools and services.
• To choose or define the standards in order to make groups management systems interoperable across different federated environments, extending federations integration to facilitate authorisation, user interaction, and global group administration.
• To establish a set of standard requirements for cloud providers to increase security, quality, interoperability and privacy over shared resources and services in the NREN clouds.

Description of work:

Several NRENs in the world are working on cloud strategies that provide a secure market of services for their end users. Examples include SURFmarket, the CHAIN-REDS science gateways, and the ELCIRA project in Latin America. Most NRENs are focused on needs that commercial providers cannot fulfill, including privacy, academic specific services and direct NREN support. In this work package, the MAGIC group aims to generate a set of inter-operation agreements for a federated system of group management that will serve as a basis for collaboration application-sharing among the NRENs of the World. NRENs will have applications deployed on a continent working with the same group in other parts of the world. Applications will be group/community-aware and will be able to adapt to customers’ needs. Research and education communities will be able to schedule, authorise, share, or carry out actions for specific groups or communities, even if they are located on another continent.

In this task, the focus will be on coordinating a global set of core requirements which cloud service providers are expected to meet, covering the following fields: intellectual property rights and ownership, legal aspects, security, continuity, confidentiality, communication, billing and technical requirements. This work will enhance and facilitate integration between NRENs while maintaining a high standard of service and security.

Activities:

3.1 Agreements for a standard in federated group management (FGM Standard) and Application Programming Interfaces (API) for it.
3.2 Definition of a set of applications that will adopt the FGM Standard.
3.3 Recommendations for Service Definitions from a marketing point of view.
3.4 Pilot portals for Latin America and other regions as appropriate, incorporating the FGM Standard.
3.5 Definition of a standard for interoperability of cloud provisioning.
3.6 Pilot of Federated service provisioning between the regions in 3.4.
3.7 Deployment of a pilot Federated Cloud Service (FCS) model, for a set of NRENs in LA, Europe, Africa, etc.
3.8 Evaluation of the FCS by the user NRENs.
3.9 Refinement of the FCS using the feedback obtained from NRENs.

The second Work Package (WP2), as it name says, it is devoted to platforms for mobility, and is led by RNP.

WP2 Participants: RedCLARA, GÉANT, RENATA, REUNA, CEDIA, CUDI, RENATER, GRNET, CESNET, CKLN, UbuntuNet Alliance, WACREN, ASREN, TEIN*CC, NITC, NIIFI, CSIR, SURFnet.

Objectives:

• To promote, coordinate and support the effort to create in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia an authorisation and authentication infrastructure (AAI) for academic services and processes.
• To promote, coordinate and support the effort to create in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia an eduroam infrastructure and processes for researchers and academics.
• To create eduroam Roaming Operators in at least two countries per region.
• To create pilot identity federations in two countries in each region as a basis for further expansion through the region.
• To provide a local boot camp to develop federation and eduroam experts in at least two countries per region.
• To create virtual courses to be used by Federation and eduroam experts to provide local training in their own constituency.
• To provide technical knowledge and policy requirements to integrate new federations and European federations.
• To provide technical knowledge to create interoperability and interoperation with new federations.

Description of work

Benefiting from the Brazilian experience in the ELCIRA project, coordinating efforts to create AAI and eduroam in Latin America, RNP will coordinate WP2, aiming at the promotion and consolidation of the foundations for creating a framework for authentication and authorisation in Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and for Latin America, CUDI will support RNP in the inclusion of new NREN and its members, particularly those participating in the SCALAC1 initiative.. The WP will be structured to enable other RENs to establish their own regional federation initiatives. This Work Package will also facilitate integration with the European initiatives under TERENA activities such as TF-EMC2 and REFEDS, and will make the necessary arrangements to make it possible to join the eduGAIN interfederation service.

The participation of the NRENs that will play the role of Focal Points is very important. Below is a description of members’ responsibilities in this WP:

• Project Leader (RedCLARA)
  • Select team members and, if cross-functional as the Core Team Leader, select Core Team Members;
  • Prepare project plan and obtain management approval of the project plan;
  • Assure that all team members understand their roles and accept their responsibilities;
  • Apply project resources according to the approved project plan;
  • Track and report on progress to project plan;
  • Keep all stakeholders informed of progress and issues;
  • Arbitrate and resolve conflict and interface problems within the project.
  • Manage the project Risks, controlling the source of risk and its mitigation strategy;
  • Ensure compliance with time and quality of deliverables.
• Work Package Leader (RNP)
  • Track and report on progress in accordance with the WP plan;
  • Analyse actual performance against the plan and make adjustments consistent with plan objectives;
  • Assure timely adaptive action is taken;
  • Establish and publish clear priorities among project activities;
  • Arbitrate and resolve conflict and interface problems within the WP;
  • Organise and provide in-class training to WP focal points;
  • Manage WP Risks, controlling the source of risk and its mitigation strategy;
  • Ensure compliance with time and quality of deliverables.
• Focal points (UBUNTUNET, CKLN, RENATER, ASREN, TEIN*CC and WACREN)
  • Negotiate the performance of activities with team members and their managers;
  • Arbitrate and resolve conflict and interface problems within the region;
  • Provide region online training to WP committed NREN;
  • Inform any issue that may impact in the WP or project goals.
• AAI and eduroam governance (TERENA)
  • Provide knowledge to create governance documents and processes to manage an AAI federation and eduroam.
• Committed NREN (all participating NRENs)
  • Implement AAI and eduroam in their respective countries using the knowledge of the online training;
  • Provide local online training to their customers;
  • Disseminate the AAI and eduroam for their customers;
  • Manage their federation and eduroam in the region.

Activities:

2.1 Analyse the regions that will encompass the project scope to design the best Federation architecture to be implemented per territory.
2.2 Develop and adapt training material for Identity Federation and eduroam deployment, supporting local language requirements as necessary.
2.3 Implement online training for Identity Federations and eduroam in an e-learning platform (NREN or project partner).
2.4 Identity Federation and eduroam training workshop for Regional RENs.
2.5 Develop and provide in-class training (boot camp) to establish identity management professionals in the region.
2.6 Implement the model selected in 2.1 for federation deployment.

The development and fostering of Global Science Communities is the major duty of MAGIC Project Work Package 5 (WP5), that is led by UbuntuNet Alliance.  

WP5 Participants: RedCLARA, GÉANT, RENATA, RNP, CUDI, GRNET, CKLN, WACREN, ASREN, TEIN*CC, NITC, NIIFI, CSIR.

WP5 Objectives:

• To invite/select three global research and scientific communities with common topics of research and education interests which include researchers of the MAGIC participating regions to participate in collaborative initiatives using advanced networks and services.
• To extend/update the Funding Opportunities Database and Partner Search application developed by the ELCIRA Project to include information from other MAGIC developing regions and provide valuable funding information for the global communities and other research groups worldwide.
• To foster the collaborative work of Global Science Communities by actively promoting the participation of researchers from all participating regions in European Commission Calls and those of other international funding agencies with high impact in the participating regions and other networking activities.
• To promote and foster the use of collaboration technologies among worldwide research communities, encouraging the proper and active use of the collaborative platforms, services and tools, by supporting them with training material and activities to learn how to use the tools.
• To use these collaborative platforms to spread knowledge and the practices of the Global Science Communities by sharing information and experiences among experts in the priority fields identified, looking to raise awareness of prevailing issues to wider audiences including policy makers, and also, to foster and improve collaboration among researchers of the MAGIC regions.

Description of work

WP5 will include the participation of the Research Communities, raising their awareness and training communities on the use of collaborative technological platforms. This is essentially a coordination activity where the project team will establish a small set of relevant user communities working on areas/topics that are of high interest in a significant number of world regions. Preference will be given to user communities that have experience of working in international projects and have at least worked in projects involving at least two of the regions involved. The global communities will be provided with online collaborative tools and will be trained on how to use them. In addition, the communities will be provided with tools to identify funding opportunities for their research. The project will expand the Funding Opportunities and Partner Search portal developed in the ELCIRA project, and use it to disseminate funding opportunities. Agreements with European and other funding agencies will be sought to automatically include information on their calls on the application. Following the experience of projects such as GLOBAL, ALICE2, ELCIRA, GILERA, CHAIN and CHAIN-REDS the project will organize Virtual Information days to take advantage of the information provided during EC Information Days and disseminate that information worldwide and specifically to the selected user communities.

Activities:
5.1 Agreements on a set of Worldwide User communities of common interest to the participating regions.
5.2 Implementation of an Information System on Worldwide funding opportunities aimed at the end users and the user communities.
5.3 Development of a set of Worldwide Virtual days to foster collaboration at a worldwide scale on the above selected topics.
5.4 H2020 Virtual information days to promote participation in International Calls.
5.5 Training material for the use of Cloud provided applications for collaboration.
5.6 Worldwide User communities virtual meetings and seminars.

The communities:

So far four Global Science Communities (GSC) have been raised, one in e-Health, other in Biodiversity, one on Environment and finally one on Remote Instrumentation. Each one of these GSC had its first virtual meeting during last February, introducing their objectives and action route to all the interested scientists all over the world. You can access all the presentations given and to the videos of these meetings by clicking in the following links and exploring its contents:

• GSC meeting on e-Healt, February 2: https://eventos.redclara.net/indico/event/634/overview
• GSC meeting on Biodiversity, February 11: https://eventos.redclara.net/indico/event/639/overview
• GSC meeting on Environment, February 18: https://eventos.redclara.net/indico/event/640/overview
• GSC meeting on Remote Instrumentation, February 25: https://eventos.redclara.net/indico/event/641/overview