LOGICA LTD 
By Today a consortium of leading IT providersthree of Europe's biggest research centres (, ) announced a partnership to launch a European cloud computing platform. "Helix Nebula - the Science Cloud", will support the massive IT requirements of European scientists,become available to governmental organisationsindustry 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 capacitiesservices that elastically meet demand.
This pan-European partnership across academiaindustry is in line with the Digital Agenda of the European Commissionwill foster innovation for sciencecreate new commercial markets.
During a two-year pilot phase, Helix Nebula will be deployedtested based on three flagship projects proposed by CERN, EMBLESA: to accelerate the search for the elusive Higgs particle, to boost large-scale genomic analyses in biomedical research,support research into natural disasters.
First, CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, will have access to more computing power to process data from the international ATLAS experiment at its Large Hadron Collider accelerator.
"CERN's computing capacity needs to keep-up with the enormous amount of data coming from the Large Hadron Colliderwe see Helix Nebula- the Science Cloud as a great way of working with industry to meet this challenge," said Frédéric Hemmer, head of CERN's IT department.
Second, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is setting up a new service to simplify the analysis of large genomes, such as those from mammals, allowing a deeper insight into evolutionbiodiversity across a range of organisms.
"The quantities of genomic sequence data are vastthe needs for high performance computing infrastructuresbioinformatics expertise to analyse these data pose a challenge for many laboratories. EMBL's novel cloud-based whole-genome-assemblyannotation pipeline involves expertise from the Genomics Core facility in Germany, EMBL's European Bioinformatics Instituteand EMBL Heidelberg's IT Services. It will allow scientists, at EMBLaround the world, to overcome these hurdlesprovide the right infrastructure on demand," said Rupert Lueck, head of IT services at EMBL.
Third, the European Space Agency (ESA), in partnership with the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France,the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is collaborating with the National Research Council (CNR)in Italy, to create an Earth observation platform focusing on earthquakevolcano research.
This undertaking is done in the framework of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a voluntary partnership of governmentsinternational organisations. Volker Liebig, ESA Director for Earth observation programmes, said, "Helix Nebula- the Science Cloud is a partnership with the potential to support an utmost exploitation of ESA satellite data, as well as to bring other communities on board to better understand the geophysical phenomena of our planet."
The commercial partners are Atos, Capgemini, CloudSigma, Interoute, Logica, Orange Business Services, SAP, SixSq, Telefonica, Terradue, Thales, The Server Labs 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 federatedsecure high-performance computing cloud platform.
More scientific organisationsservice providers are welcome to join Helix Nebula- the Science Cloud. For more detailsupdates about Helix Nebula - the Science Cloud, please visit us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or send an email to contact@helix-nebula.eu.
Contact:
CERN Press Office, press.office@cern.ch
+41 (0)22 767 34 32
+41 (0)22 767 21 41
EMBL press contact
Lena Raditsch
Head of CommunicationsPublic Relations
+49 62213878125
lena.raditsch@embl.de
ESA press contact
Dr. Maryline Lengert
Senior Advisor
+39 06 941 80430
maryline.lengert@esa.int
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CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerlandthe United Kingdom. Romania is a candidate for accession. Israel is an Associate Member in the pre-stage to Membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European CommissionUNESCO have Observer status.
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is a basic research institute sponsored by public research funding from 20 member states (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerlandthe United Kingdom)associate member state Australia. Research at EMBL is conducted by approximately 85 independent groups covering molecular biology. The laboratory has five units: the main laboratory in Heidelberg, outstations in Hinxton (the European Bioinformatics Institute), Grenoble, Hamburg,Monterotondo near Rome. The cornerstones of EMBL's mission are: to perform basic research in molecular biology; to train scientists, studentsvisitors at all levels; to offer vital services to scientists in Member States; to develop new instrumentsmethods in the life sciences,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 programmesthe dissemination of scientific achievements.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe's gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe's space capabilityensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europethe world. ESA is an international organisation with 19 Member States. By coordinating the financialintellectual resources of its members, it can undertake programmesactivities far beyond the scope of any single European country. ESA's job is to draw up the European space programmecarry it through. ESA's programmes are designed to find out more about Earth, its immediate space environment, our Solar Systemthe Universe, as well as to develop satellite-based technologiesservices,to promote European industries. ESA also works closely with space organisations outside Europe.
