Meet ACONET, the newest EGI Council participant representing Austria

Read a short interview with Dr Matthias Schramm. He tells us more about ACONET, the newest EGI council member and a strategic user advisory board for ACOnet – the Austrian Academic Computer Network.

Hello Matthias. Can you please tell us a bit more in detail about the ACONET network?

Hello. ACONET – the "Association for the Promotion of an Austrian National Research and Education Network (NREN)" – was founded in 1986 as a consortium of Austrian universities. Today, all Austrian public universities, the majority of universities of applied sciences, and some federal universities participate in the ACONET association. It does act as a strategic user advisory board for ACOnet – the Austrian Academic Computer Network – a high-performance network infrastructure and identity federation, using 10 resp. 100 Gbps Ethernet over DWDM technology. Currently, an Austrian Quantum Fiber Network is set up; its connection to a German network is planned in the short term. ACONET plans to provide access to HPC capacities and ICT capabilities of de-centralised IT departments.

[caption id="attachment_61062" align="alignright" width="481"] Figure 1: Topology ACOnet (© ACOnet )[/caption]

What do you see as the most immediate joint activities kicking off the collaboration with EGI?

Joining the EGI Federation results from a dynamic process lasting for years. Significant national joint efforts in the Climate and the Earth Observation sectors led to Austrian collaborations that can now hopefully expand further by collaborating within the EGI. The first possible services could, for example, be the provision of Satellite data cubes from the EU's Copernicus programme or of Jupyter Hubs for teaching and training services in environmental and data sciences.

If the situation allows, can we count on our ACONET colleagues to meet our community during the EGI conference in Prague?

We are certainly looking forward to meeting the community, either physically or remote.  

Visit ACONET's website: https://www.aco.net

Contact Person: Dr. Matthias Schramm, +43 1 58801 12238, egi@tuwien.ac.at