Major development of

the NIIF e-Infrastructure

by using Structural Funds

Lajos Bálint Tamás Máray

János Mohácsi

NIIF/Hungarnet

TERENA GA

Reykjavik, 24-25 May 2012

Practical experiences and lessons to learn

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NIIF structural funds experiences

e-Infrastructure development in Hungary

History: Europe Hungary

1980-1985 First experiments Awareness, learning

1985-1990 EARN IIF

1990-1995 EuropaNET NIIF

1995-2000 TEN (34, 155) HBONE

2000-2005 GÉANT HPC & grid & VC

2005-2010 GÉANT+ HBONE+

Major developments (periodicity of some 10 years):

1990-1995: Political changes (Internet) + DANTE membership

2000-2005: Liberalised DataComm. in Hungary

2010-2015: ???

2009-2010:

Critical shortage of development funds approached!

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Funding history

Annual operational costs regularly budgeted governmental funding from central stately budget (~5 MEUR/yr)

(year by year fighting for support)

Development costs just occasionally appeared ”milestones”:

- initial creation of first research network generation

- transient appearance of spare money from liberalisation

Opportunity of using structural funds for e-RI development:

• 2004 – 2006 (2007): 1st National Development Plan – NFT1

major NIIF efforts in vain (no NFT1 funding for e-Infrastructure)

• 2007 – 2011 (2013): 2nd National Development Plan – UMFT (NFT2)

elevated efforts, multilevel lobbying, political support …

… finally success (3rd round attempt!)

Basic issue: Delayed understanding of e-RI importance by governments!

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UMFT - “New Hungary Development Plan”

Related Operational Programs (finally having supported e-Infrastructure development)

TIOP – Societal Infrastructure OP - subprogram for Higher Education

KMOP – Central Hungary OP

TAMOP – Social Renewal OP

Total 3 yr UMFT funding for 2+1 NIIF development projects: ~ 4.7 BHUF (~ 18 MEUR)

= ~85% (>15MEUR) SF + 15% national matching money

(in accordance with EC-NDP rules)

+ >2 MEUR FP7 project funding by EC DG-INFSO

Challenges (on top of technical issues): • Unbalanced nature of OPs – but building balanced infrastructure

(SF rules to be refined wrt. convergence vs. central regions)

(conflict of EU–national–local aspects to be dissolved)

• Bureaucratic and slow procedures of project funding

(planning difficulties in a fast changing technical environment)

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Results of the development

• Complete renewal of the NREN backbone – optical/IP layer

• Complete renewal of the national HPC infrastructure

• Establishing a distributed storage infrastructure

• Complete renewal of the federal academic AAI infrastructure

• Complete renewal of the academic VC infrastructure

• Introduction of several new services

(by exploiting the new e-Infrastructure elements –

– e.g. cloud services, videotorium)

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HBONE+, the new optical backbone

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HBONE+ services

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Achievements – major e-Infrastructure features

• n x 10/40 Gbps hybrid network (IP + e2e) + related FP7 projects

• ~ 3200 km DF (CEF) backbone

• 40-100 Gbps experiments (CERN data center in Budapest)

• ~ 79 PoPs

• ~ 500 institutions (~ 700 access sites)

• ~ 700.000 users (7 % of population)

• Grids (+ related FP7 projects)

• NIIF cloud development, non-commercial (+ related FP7 projects)

• ~ 50 Tflops aggregate HPC (4 supercomputers, various architecture)

• ~ 1+1 PByte distributed storage

• advanced collaboration facilities (~ 150 HD VC nodes …)

• Data Infrastructure/repository development initiatives (Videotorium …)

• widening service portfolio

• federated national AAI (eduID)

• advanced CRM

• improved conditions of continuing EC project partnerships

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Conclusions

• Exploiting Structural Funds is essential for developing the e-Infrastructure in less developed member states – fight for them!

(advanced Research Infrastructures play key role in enhancing cohesion within Europe – repeated application for SF is needed)

• Project funding by FPs should be continued for supporting European level RIs like GEANT, PRACE, etc.

(Structural Funds alone can’t operate appropriately:

impact is maximised by combined FP&SF funding)

• National decision making is to be harmonised on how to use SFs

(needs European-level coordination and due stimulation)

• Horizon2020 will help by providing a pleasing framework for both

(combined FP&SF funding + stimulated local decisions on SF)

• Healthy combination of excellence, cohesion, and innovation goals

is a crucial contributor to improved funding of R&E in Europe

• Just a common wish and a joint will can motivate member states to

spend due portions of SFs on e-Infrastructure development

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Let’s see …

… and let’s cross our fingers …