Helix Nebula PR 862x485

European providers to support a new cloud computing Marketplace for Science, building on the Helix Nebula Initiative

7 May 2014

  • European cloud providers to support a new federated European Cloud Marketplace
  • Integration with existing e-Infrastructures e.g. EGI and GÉANT, to form a hybrid cloud Computing Marketplace and reach out to Europe’s research communities
  • Trusted cloud services through compliance with EU regulations and legislation

European Cloud service providers, Atos through Canopy its Cloud company, CGI, CloudSigma, EGI, Interoute, SixSq, The Server Labs and T-Systems, have agreed to support a new European Cloud Marketplace. The Helix Nebula Marketplace service will begin operations in May 2014. It builds on Helix Nebula – the Science Cloud Initiative, a pioneering partnership between big science and big business in Europe fostered by the European Commission and its Digital Agenda that charts the course towards the sustainable provision of cloud computing for science. The Helix Nebula Marketplace offers a European Cloud Marketplace service that is compliant with EU regulations and legislation through collaboration between commercial providers and public e-Infrastructures, including EGI and GÉANT.

The Cloud Marketplace will be operated by CGI and branded as the Helix Nebula Marketplace (HNX). HNX grows out of the Helix Nebula Initiative, which followed the Helix Nebula FP7 project funded by the European Commission and led by CERN. HNX intends to deliver easy access to a range of commercial Cloud Services through the innovative broker technology deployed within the Helix Nebula Initiative over the last two years and tested with flagship applications from CERN, EMBL and ESA. By federating public sector data centre resources from within the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) HNX will enable EGI’s research communities to use HNX services within a hybrid cloud model and following a joint validation programme, GÉANT is to support the development of HNX. Several cloud providers from various EU Member States have joined the Helix Nebula Initiative. HNX will be open to new cloud providers that are able to participate competitively in line with European regulations and with a suitable quality of service.

The Cloud services are offered to the global research community, for both publicly-funded and commercial Research and Technology Organisations of diverse sectors, including healthcare, oil and gas, financial, high-tech, and manufacturing. This scope will enable large-scale and High Performance Computing deployments from the start.

Beginning in May 2014, customers will be able to use HNX to choose between various suppliers or combinations of suppliers offering independent Cloud services, and to buy, use and manage such Cloud services seamlessly. The providers are also determined to build on from an initial series of operational offerings to extend HNX with Information-as-a-Service offerings, making open research data and algorithms from various research and technology projects and organizations available to the public in a pre-configured processing environment. Eventually, HNX will lead to a Digital Energy Marketplace, where users will have easy access to a wide range of services including digital infrastructure, tools, information and applications.

Helix Nebula and the Marketplace will be presented and demonstrated at the forthcoming Helix Nebula Public Event to be held at CERN in Geneva on 14 May, see: http://indico.cern.ch/event/293382/.

About Helix Nebula – the Science Cloud Initiative

The Helix Nebula Initiative has been established by public and private organisations to build a multidisciplinary cloud platform for data intensive science. For more information visit: http://helix-nebula.eu/.

The following organisations are cloud providers and research organisations who have been instrumental in the development of and support HNX, the Helix Nebula Marketplace. For more information visit: http://hnx.helix-nebula.eu/.

About Atos and Canopy

Atos SE (Societas europaea) is an international information technology services company with annual 2013 revenue of EUR 8.6 billion and over 76,000 employees in 52 countries. Serving a global client base, it delivers IT services in three domains, Consulting & Technology Services, Systems Integration, and Managed Services & BPO, and transactional services through Worldline. Atos’ cloud services are delivered by its cloud company, Canopy.

Canopy, an Atos company powered by EMC and VMware technology, is the Cloud Service Line of Atos and the European leader in enterprise and government cloud, offering a one-stop-shop for cloud services, focussed on cloud delivery to large public and multinational private sector organizations. Canopy offers its customers Infrastructure as a Service and Private Cloud, Platform as a Service, Software as a Service and Consultancy. Canopy’s offerings are based on open standards so customers can choose their preferred technology and decide whether to run solutions off- or on-premise to best meet their business needs.  Headquartered in London (UK), Canopy currently operates in 9 countries across 3 continents.
Contact: Caroline Crouch, caroline.crouch@atos.net, +44 20 7830 4233.

About CERN

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics. Its headquarters are in Geneva. Its Member States are currently: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Romania has the status of Candidate for Accession. Serbia is an Associate Member State in the pre-stage to Membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.

About CGI

With 68, 000 professionals operating in 40 countries, CGI is the world’s 5th largest independent IT and business process services company. CGI fosters local accountability for client success while bringing global delivery capabilities to clients’ front doors. Founded in 1976, CGI applies a disciplined delivery approach that has achieved an industry-leading track record of on-time, on-budget projects. Our high-quality business consulting, systems integration and outsourcing services help clients leverage current investments while adopting new technology and business strategies that achieve top and bottom line results. As a demonstration of our commitment, our average client satisfaction score for the past 10 years has measured consistently higher than 9 out of 10. With annualized revenue in excess of C$10 billion and an order backlog exceeding C$19 billion, CGI shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Website: www.cgi.com.
For further information please contact: jenny.thorpe@cgi.com +44 7771 815428.

About CloudSigma

CloudSigma is a pure-cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider that’s enabling the digital industrial economy through its highly-available, flexible, enterprise-class hybrid cloud servers and cloud hosting solutions, both in Europe and the U.S. CloudSigma is the most customizable cloud provider on the market, giving customers full control over their cloud and eliminating restrictions on how users deploy their computing resources. With CloudSigma, customers can provision processing, storage, networks and other fundamental computing resources as they please, as well as extend private networks out of existing infrastructure and elastically into CloudSigma’s IaaS cloud to create easy to manage and transparent hybrid cloud solutions.
For further information please contact: cloudsigma@marchpr.com, +1 617 960 9877.

About EGI

The European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) is a pan-European federation of publicly funded computing, storage and data resources to support excellent science, research and innovation in Europe. Building on over a decade of investment by national governments and the European Commission, EGI pools together resources from more than 40 countries and supports more than 22,000 researchers across many scientific fields with solutions such as high-throughput data analysis, federated cloud, federated operations and community-driven innovation and support. EGI is coordinated by EGI.eu, a not-for-profit foundation supported by the EGI-InSPIRE project and governed by the National Grid Initiatives (NGIs) and international research communities.
For further information, please contact press@egi.eu or visit www.egi.eu.

About EMBL

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory is a basic research institute funded by public research monies from 20 member states (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) and associate member state Australia. Research at EMBL is conducted by approximately 85 independent groups covering the spectrum of molecular biology. The Laboratory has five units: the main Laboratory in Heidelberg, and Outstations in Hinxton (the European Bioinformatics Institute), Grenoble, Hamburg, and Monterotondo near Rome. The cornerstones of EMBL’s mission are: to perform basic research in molecular biology; to train scientists, students and visitors at all levels; to offer vital services to scientists in the member states; to develop new instruments and methods in the life sciences and to actively engage in technology transfer activities. Around 190 students are enrolled in EMBL’s International PhD programme. Additionally, the Laboratory offers a platform for dialogue with the general public through various science communication activities such as lecture series, visitor programmes and the dissemination of scientific achievements.

About ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. It is an intergovernmental organisation, created in 1975, with the mission to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space delivers benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. ESA has 20 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Den-mark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, of whom 18 are Member States of the EU. ESA has Cooperation Agreements with eight other Member States of the EU. Canada takes part in some ESA programmes under a Cooperation Agreement. ESA is also working with the EU on implementing the Galileo and Copernicus programmes. By coordinating the financial and intellectual resources of its members, ESA can undertake programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country. ESA develops the launchers, spacecraft and ground facilities needed to keep Europe at the forefront of global space activities. Today, it launches satellites for Earth observation, navigation, telecommunications and astronomy, sends probes to the far reaches of the Solar System and cooperates in the human exploration of space.

About GÉANT

GÉANT is the pan-European research and education network that interconnects Europe’s National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). Together we connect over 50 million users at 10,000 institutions across Europe, supporting research in areas such as energy, the environment, space and medicine.
Operating at speeds of up to 500Gbps and reaching over 100 national networks worldwide, GÉANT remains the largest and most advanced research and education network in the world.
Co-funded by the European Commission under the EU’s 7th Research and Development Framework Programme, GÉANT is a flagship e-Infrastructure key to achieving the European Research Area – a seamless and open European space for online research – and assuring world-leading connectivity between Europe and the rest of the world in support of global research collaborations.
The network and associated services comprise the GÉANT (GN3plus) project, a collaborative effort comprising 41 project partners: 38 European NRENs, DANTE, TERENA and NORDUnet (representing the 5 Nordic countries). GÉANT is operated by DANTE on behalf of Europe’s NRENs.
For more information, visit www.geant.net.

About Interoute

Interoute Communications Ltd is the owner operator of a global cloud services platform, which encompasses over 60,000 km of lit fibre network, 10 hosting data centres, 8 Virtual Data Centres and 31 collocation centres, with connections to 140 additional third-party data centres across Europe. Interoute is the ideal partner for computing, connectivity and communications and developing new services. Its Unified ICT strategy supports enterprises looking for a scalable, secure and unconstrained platform on which they can build their voice, video, computing and data services, as well as service providers in need of high capacity international data transit and infrastructure.

About SixSq

SixSq is a cloud computing and distributed system solution provider specialising in agile delivery and process automation. Following DEVOPS principals, our unique solutions, such as SlipStream®, provide an unprecedented level of automation for cloud users, managed service providers, independent service vendors and large enterprises. Working with all mainstream cloud infrastructures and solutions, SixSq prides itself in promoting cloud neutral solutions for this fast moving IT sector. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, SixSq employs highly skilled software engineers, developers and system administrators. Our customers are small high-tech organisations, large enterprises and European and international organisations. SixSq team members share a passion for excellence and innovation, with dedicated attention to customer needs. We strive to build long lasting partnerships and collaborations with all of our customers.

About The Server Labs

The Server Labs is a specialist IT Consultancy and Software Development Company and a leading authority in Cloud Computing, Big Data and High Performance computing. Founded in 2004, and with offices in the UK, Spain and Germany, The Server Labs focuses on the design and implementation of IT architectures and advanced software engineering projects. Working with the most advanced solutions and technologies and offering its clients, predominantly large-sized corporations, cost-effective, robust, scalable and high performance solutions.

About T-Systems

Drawing on a global infrastructure of data centers and networks, T-Systems operates information and communication technology (ICT) systems for multinational corporations and public sector institutions. T-Systems provides integrated solutions for the networked future of business and society. The company’s some 52,700 employees combine industry expertise and ICT innovations to add significant value to customers’ core business all over the world. T-Systems generated revenue of around EUR 10 billion in the 2012 financial year.
T-Systems is the corporate customers unit of Deutsche Telekom, one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with 133 million mobile customers, 32 million fixed-network lines and more than 17 million broadband lines (as of March 31, 2013). The Group provides products and services for the fixed network, mobile communications, the Internet and IPTV for consumers, and ICT solutions for business customers and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in around 50 countries and has 230,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of EUR 58.2 billion in the 2012 financial year – more than half of it outside Germany (as of December 31, 2012).

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