The future European Grid Infrastructure — Roadmap and challenges

In many research domains, support from computing technology is seen as a major tool for obtaining scientific breakthroughs. This involves many different kinds of technologies from networking, supercomputing and storage technologies often provided within so-called e-infrastructures. At present, Europe is preparing the next step in consolidation of its e-infrastructures. This concerns particularly the initiation of the European grid infrastructure as a permanent and sustainable grid for all sciences. It is expected that the provisioning of an always-available and always-on grid would be beneficial for many applications. These benefits have been demonstrated in many grid projects in Europe and abroad, and there is potential for grids emerging in many other application domains as well.