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Successful GN4-2 Project Period 1 Review

The GN4-2 Project Period 1 Review took place last week, 7-9 November in Brussels, hosted by project partner and Belgian NREN Belnet.

The review covered the first period of the GN4-2 project detailing the activities carried out from May 2016 to August 2017. The external independent experts were: Robin ARAK, Ciprian POPOVICIU, Veneta ALEKSIEVA, Javier VAL ALONSO and Heikki SUNDQUIST. Also present was Enrique GOMEZ, European Commission Project Officer.

A project of this scope, ambition and size means a wide range of achievements and significant benefits for the research and education community. Over 450 slides were presented during the week, detailing achievements from 40 partners and 500 contributors, across 10 Activities – such as:

  • ​Cost savings: re-procurement of 17 private circuits led to direct savings of nearly €700k, whilst increasing the capacity on most of the services.
  • Increased NREN engagement and satisfaction: unprecedented levels of support with 38 NREN service reviews completed; largest ever response to annual satisfaction survey, with results showing strong confidence in GÉANT.
  • Serving big-science: providing unprecedented 2 x 100G capa​city to CERN for distribution of the LHC computation.
  • Building the cloud: following a successful pan-European IaaS tender, GÉANT has created an innovative digital single market for cloud services, with 23 services currently available for NRENs to offer their communities.
  • Growing eduGAIN: added 9 new federation members, a 23% increase in the number of IdPs, and significant increase in adoption of features to support research.

For more on the achievements and to read the full story click here

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