ORCL: Oracle and COMETA Consortium Combine Approach to Grid Computing for Sicilian Pilot Project

Oracle today announced a partnership with the Italian COMETA Consortium (COMETA) to work on a pilot project called S-Sicilia over the next three years. This study of a Grid environment will address a number of issues including accountability, licensing and support. The S-Sicilia project will highlight the differences between commercial and enterprise grids and will enable Oracle to share best practice and raise awareness of the demands and skills needed in developing a Grid infrastructure.
COMETA will set up the pilot project to see how a service provider can track the resources of a Grid as they are used by different organisations, and charge accordingly. In addition the project will examine how to plan resource allocation and capacity based on previous resource usage.

Under the S-Sicilia project, Oracle and COMETA will tackle the challenge of licensing in a distributed environment and analyse the problem of accountability with a specific focus on Grid Licensing Schemes, Service Level Agreements and Quality of Service. The collaboration also plans to create a Competency Centre on Oracle-based solutions within COMETA.

COMETA's advanced Competency Centre in Sicily will promote research and develop advanced solutions in high performance computing. COMETA's goal is to establish and maintain a regional distributed computing and storage infrastructure to improve the scientific cooperation of Sicilian Universities and research institutions with the rest of the world.

"We're working with Oracle to create a powerful Competency Centre that has a nucleus of highly skilled people," said Antonio Puliafito, VP of COMETA. "We must ensure that we have the intelligence and capability to train local people in Sicily, giving them key skills to develop applications and an understanding of the demands of Grid. We're turning to Oracle for the guidance and support we need in this area."

Oracle will provide COMETA with consulting and technology support including software installation and system configuration. Oracle will also offer the testing of programmes administered through Oracle.

"The S-Sicilia project enables the R&D and commercial worlds to join forces to advance the development of Grid Computing," said Monica Marinucci, EMEA Oracle in R&D Programme Director.. "This is an important opportunity for COMETA to break out beyond its experience of the scientific world. It will enable them to understand how Grid works in the enterprise and how businesses can get the most results from their computing resources and related services."

About COMETA
COMETA is a multi-party consortium for the promotion and adoption of high performance computing. The funding members of the COMETA consortium are: National Institute of Nuclear Physics, National Institute for Astrophysics, National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology, University of Catania, University of Messina, University of Palermo, Consorzio SCIRE.

COMETA's goal is to establish and maintain a regional distributed computing and storage infrastructure, which has to be on-demand, general purpose, open and able to improve the scientific cooperation of Sicilian Universities and research institutions with the rest of the world.

COMETA also intends to bring in the GRID multi/inter-disciplinar scientific and industrial applications through the adoption of web portals and high level user interfaces remotely accessible by any user with a plethora of devices (personal computer, hand-held devices, cellular phone etc.).

COMETA is currently managing the PI2S2 project, an €11 Million project supported from the MIUR which, together with the €4 Million Trigrid project, sponsored by the Sicilia region, intends to create in Sicily a powerful high performance computing infrastructure which will be part of the European GRID network. Access to the Sicilian GRID infrastructure is open for the entire length of the PI2S2 project to all the researchers and virtual organizations that express their interest.