On the 9th October 2014, Florence, Italy during the Cloud Computing Procurement Actions session at the ICT Proposers' Day 2014, Sara Garavelli, Trust-IT Services presented the PICSE initiative.
On 9 October 2014, in Florence, Italy, Dirk van Rooy, Head of Sector, European Cloud Partnership, DG CONNECT E2 Software & Services, Cloud, presented the ICT 8 – 2015 call: "Boosting public sector productivity and innovation through cloud computing services". The presentation has been followed by an overall overview of the PICSE initiative.
CERN was invited to the European Research e-Infrastructures and Innovation Clusters to demonstrate how Helix Nebula supports SMEs.
CERN highlighted the need for commercial service providers, which was acknowledged and it was noted that public service providers should not try to offer the same services as commercial providers. Public services providers can have a role earlier in the innovation cycle, such as to support prototyping activities, but there should be a smooth transition to commercial providers once the applications (or new services) are commercialised. Clearly ‘human’ services (especially training and consultancy) were seen as important by the innovation clusters and SMEs present.
At the end of September 2014, Atos presented the Helix Nebula Marketplace to an audience composed of scientists and private sector R&D specialists who build models and run simulations on Supercomputers (HPC), HNX plans are to offer HPC as a Service in the future. This was the audience of the ISC Cloud conference, held this year in Heidelberg, Germany.
On Friday 26 September 2014, the Earth Observation sector of the Directorate General for Research and Innovation, European Commission organised a dedicated workshop on engaging the European private sector in GEOSS. The workshop was held in Brussels on 26 September 2014 and attracted some 100 participants of which about 70 represented private companies (mainly value-adding, but also some end-users and NGOs). Also present were representatives of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) European Caucus, pan-European and international organisations, and other services of the European Commission.
ESA visited the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin (NSCC-TJ), the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), the State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modelling for Atmospheric Science (LASG) and met the local NRENs (CSRNET).
The "Clouds for Research and Education Workshop" held 24-26 June 2014 in Rome, Italy was focused on providing a better understanding how Cloud Computing may benefit businesses as well as supporting Cloud Specialists in their work.
Helix Nebula will be present at the next e-IRG Workshop organised under the Greek EU Presidency of the European Union and hosted by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology in Athens, Greece, June 9 to 11, 2014.
The goal of the workshop "Cloud Computing Uptake in the Public Sector" was to bring together organisations that have expressed clear interest in cloud computing and that could benefit from interaction. Furthermore the workshop provided input to identifying possible future actions in this area.