The DECIDE Project: Designing and Implementing a Prototype Service for Supporting Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease

This paper will present the design and implementation challenges of the innovative DECIDE service, to support research and early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. DECIDE service, which is based on a Grid eInfrastructure, offers a set of tools providing quantitative measurements, to help researchers and clinicians make more informed diagnosis. As the service specifically targets the clinical community, it differs significantly from other initiatives since it needs to comply with the requirements imposed by the clinical routine in terms of accuracy, robustness, ease of use, data handling policies, adherence to clinical praxis. Moreover, sustainability aspects will also be discussed, since DECIDE aims to propose such service as a reference at European level, possibly extending it to other pathologies. We will then summarize the main results obtained to date, and the possible future developments

Declarative modeling for deploying a container platform

Cloud computing services provide several benefits in terms of flexibility, scalability and cost reductions. Container technology allows to further lower the overhead of virtualization making it possible to run more components per server. Designing and deploying a cloud platform requires significant effort and it should be possibly dealt with automation tools. Automation can be dealt through either an imperative or declarative approach. We present how we designed and deployed a cloud container platform using declarative modeling. A model of the architecture of the service is described through a declarative specification and then passed to an orchestration tool that generates the actual plan of steps to be performed in the deployment

Declarative Modeling for Cloud Deployments

Cloud compung offers several benefits: resources can be allocated on demand, scaling according to varying usage paerns and eventually reducing the costs for individual groups to provision and maintain their own infrastructure. Providing cloud compung services besides connecvity is a natural evoluon for NRENs as users demand such services and also because the networking infrastructure itself is evolving towards using virtualizaon techniques. Building a cloud plaorm is though a daunng task, that requires coordinang the deployment of many services, interrelated and dependent on each other. Provisioning, servicing and maintaining the plaorm should be automated. For the deployment of the GARR Federated Cloud Compung Plaorm, we chose an intent‑based approach, which relies on declarave modeling for specifying the requirements of the service provisioning, describing the parts that compose the system, any specific constraint requirements and the supplier/consumer relaons between them. An automated orchestraon tool analyzes the model, compares it with the current state of the system being deployed, determines the resources that need to be provisioned, generates a sequence of executable steps needed to bring the deployment in line with the model, and coordinat

Cloud Service Delivery Across the R&E Community - Opportunities and Risks

Cloud computing, and cloud services in particular, offer the Research and Education sector huge opportunities to both maximise effectiveness and reduce the capital investment and development time to deliver results. By utilising shared and off-the-shelf services for commodity activities, the R&E community can refocus its design, development and support resources into those fields that cannot be easily provided by the commercial sector.Cloud computing empowers users to select and use the services they really want, in an easy and often economically attractive manner. The broad standardisation of service delivery offers substantial advantages with scalability and user acceptance. By using services that the users have had experience of outside the R&E community, training requirements can be minimised and personal efficiency can be improved.The scalability of cloud services also allows rapid expansion or contraction of capacity as the project requires with minimal penalties. This near-linear cost model allows easier budgeting and financial control

EOSC Pillar "National Initiatives" Survey (SUF edition)

Full edition for scientific use. The EOSC-Pillar ”National Initiatives” Survey is a cross-section study in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, and Italy. The survey aims at landscaping national initiatives of open research data and services with relevance to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Four target groups are part of the study: e-infrastructures, research infrastructures, universities and funding bodies. The survey contains questions on the perception of EOSC as well as detailed questions assessing e.g. the e-infrastructures’ business models, technical characteristics, access conditions, FAIRness of the data holdings and adopted policies related to open science

D3.1 Summary report of the EOSC-Pillar National Initiatives Survey

EOSC-Pillar invited 2,204 organisations (funding bodies, universities, research infrastructures, and e-infrastructures) in five countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy) to participate in the ‘National Initiatives’ Survey. 688 representatives (31%) responded to the survey and answered various questions on business models, sustainability, users, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), access to data and services, FAIRness of data, data management in repositories, regulations on open science and open data as well as on perceptions of EOSC. This document contains the main results in terms of frequency analysis