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Europe has succeeded in establishing a leading worldwide position in Grids. The consistent portfolio of Sixth Framework Programme Grid research projects contributes to boost European competitiveness in Grid technologies and applications. ERCIM experts have been involved heavily in the strategic work, for example through participation in the Next Generation Grid expert group, an advisory body convened by the European Commission. It is no accident that the ERCIM office is currently coordinating several Grid-related projects supported by the European Commission:

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The Computer Network Information Center (CNIC) is a subsidiary research institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). CNIC is engaged mainly in the construction, operation and supporting services of informatization of CAS, and in research and development of computer network technology, database technology as well as high performance computing. In 1999, CNIC participated in the project "National High Performance Computing Environment(NHPCE)", which was funded by National Hi-tech Research and Development Program (i.e. 863 Program) of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of China. NHPCE aimed to build a grid computing environment through connecting most of powerful supercomputers for research at that time. It was the first national project about grid in China. Since then, CNIC managed to carry out quite a few grid related projects and made a lot of achievements in grid testbed, grid software and grid applications. CNIC is the leading site of the CAS 10th Five-year Informatization Program from 2001 to 2005. Under this program, CNIC established a grid infrastructure with the 5TFLOPS DeepComp 6800 supercomputer, mass storage capacity as 60TB SAN disk array and100TB tape library, SGI Onyx 350 for visualization, and so on. In addition, Scientific Data Grid was built on the huge scientific data resources accumulated by hundreds and thousands of scientists of CAS in the past over twenty years. By the end of 2004, the Scientific Data Grid contains 388 scientific databases with total volume of 13TB. The data cover a wide range of disciplinary including chemistry, biology, bioinformatics, geography, resources and environment, high energy physics, material, astronomy, and so on. A lot of applications, especially some grid-enabled applications, were developed on the Scientific Data Grid in recent years.

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Huawei is a leader in providing next generation telecommunications networks. The company is committed to providing innovative and customized products, services and solutions to create long-term value and potential growth for its customers.

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INRIA (http://www.inria.fr), the French national institute for research in computer science and control, is dedicated to fundamental and applied research in information and communication science and technology (ICST). The Institute also plays a major role in technology transfer by fostering training through research, diffusion of scientific and technical information, development, as well as providing expert advice and participating in international programs. The Institute’s strategy closely combines scientific excellence with technology transfer. INRIA’s chief goal for 2003-2007 is to achieve major scientific and technological breakthroughs in seven priority grand challenges, among which two are directly related to Grid research: Designing and mastering the future network infrastructures and communication services platforms, and Combining simulation, visualization and interaction. INRIA develops many partnerships with industry and fosters technology transfer and entrepreneurship in the field of ICST. It acts as the scientific coordinators of the CoreGRID network of Excellence and XtreemOS Integrated Integrated Projects. Both are funded by the European Commission. Michel Cosnard and Thierry Priol have been successively directors of the French ACI GRID, the national program in Grid research funded by the Ministry of Research.

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The National University of Defence Technology (NUDT) is a university directly under the supervision of the Central Military Committee of the Peoples’ Republic of China. Supported by 863 R&D programme CERNET and ACT, it has taken part into concrete researches projects concerning about Data Grid, CORBA based middleware platform, component-based application server, and Web serivces-based CORBA resource framework. It also lead some theoretical research programme related to Grid middleware, including the Virtual Computing Environment Project, supported by The National Basic Research Program. NUDT was the coordinator of the Orientware consortium, an open organization that integrates the mature results achieved by the 863 Program in the domain of middleware by key universities, research institutes and companies. Orientware code base is a collaborative composition of various middleware platforms, such as CORBA, J2EE, SOA, Portal and Workflow built on open and standard technical specifications. The goal is to provide a comprehensive middleware platform for the Chinese national information infrastructure.

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Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SpA is one of the most important Italian private ICT enterprise with 4000+ employees and 35 italian locations and 2 respectively in Brussels and Dublin. The Engineering Group is composed of 12 companies covering the following competences: logistics and security, training, consultancy, services and software development, technologies and software products. The organization is compliant with all the major quality standards (ISO9001, AQAP 110/160 and CMMI level 2 and should reach the level 3 in few time). Engineering is expanding itself in the open source products environment and gives high importance to the research and innovation investing in it around 7% of its yearly revenues. The R&D Department is organised to work in strict cooperation with business divisions in order to facilitate knowledge and technology transfer, allocating an annual budget of around 5% of the global turnover. R&D laboratory is founding member of ETP (European Technology Platform) NESSI – Networked European Software and Services Initiative and contribute participating at the Steering committee member of ETP NEM - Networked Electronic Media. Grid and Service-based Infrastructure Unit is involved in several grid-related initiatives: DILIGENT, ETICS, GRIFIN, ECHOGRID, NESSIGRID and DEWS and is member of the Build and Test Group within the OGF. The company is also an active member of the ObjectWeb2 community.

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Founded in 1956, the Institute of Computing Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICT/CAS) is the premium national research institute on computer science in China. As a leading provider of high performance computing infrastructure and technology of China, ICT has given birth to the most powerful supercomputer of China, the Dawning 4000A cluster, which has the capacity of 10TFlops and ranked the 10th of World Top 500 in 2004. ICT scientists started research in grid technology in 1996 and became the leader of a series of national grid research projects. By the end of 2004, there are about 100 staffs and students involved in grid research, covering computational grid, information grid and knowledge grid. The grid software developed at ICT, namely Vega Grid Operating System, has been taken as the core software foundation for China National Grid (CNGrid), a national R&D initiative sponsored by China Ministry of Science and Technology. Vega Grid software has been successfully deployed on grid nodes of CNGrid that spanning multiple cities in China. It provides scientists a virtual and secure computing environment by adopting a novel standards-based, service-oriented approach. By now Vega Grid software has been utilized to support a broad spectrum of application domains, from computing sensitive ones such as distributed simulation in manufacturing, underground water exploration, petroleum resource prospect, and large-scale genome sequencing and analyzing, to information scope ones, such as scientific database, distance learning, and e-governance.

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Beihang University (formerly Beijing Institute of Aeronautics) or BUAA for short, was founded on October 25, 1952 out of the merger of the aeronautical departments of Tsinghua University, Beiyang University, Amoy (Xiamen) University, Sichuan University, Yunnan University, Northwest Institute of Technology, College of Engineering, North China University, and Southwest Aeronautical Institute. Situated in the capital in the center of Zhongguancun Science Park, next to China' s National Olympic Center, with an area of over 100 hectares, BUAA is China' s first university of aeronautical and astronautical engineering. Since its founding BUAA has been one of the key universities given priority for development. In the new century and millennium, BUAA was officially listed in China's Action Plan for the Revitalization of Education in the 21st Century. Over the past 50years BUAA has provided about 80000 professionals of high caliber in various disciplines for the country. At present, the university comprises 17 schools and 6 departments, covering such diverse fields as science, technology, liberal arts, law, economy, management, philosophy, foreign languages and education. Total faculty and staff number more than 3300, including 10 academicians of either the Chinese Academy of Sciences or the Chinese Academy of Engineering Sciences, over 1400 full or associate professors, and 290 supervisors of doctorate programs. BUAA has a total enrolment of over 26,000, including more than 1300 doctorate candidates, over 5000 master candidates, more than 14,000 in 4 or 2 year undergraduate programs, and about 300 overseas students. It has 42 research institutes or interdisciplinary research centers, 11 key disciplines of the national level, and 89 laboratories (including 4 national key laboratories, 5 national specialized laboratories, and 12 provincialor ministrial-level key laboratories.) In recent years BUAA has ranked among the foremost in China in terms of funding for scientific research. The university is equipped with all ancillary facilities. The library, with an area of over 24,000 m2, has a collection of over 1.2 million books. BUAA's sports facilities include a modern gymnasium and a sports ground with sophisticated equipment. BUAA has become one of the China' s important bases for scientific and technological innovation and quality education of high-level personnel.

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COME WITH US TO THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGIES The main challenge for an IT Consulting company is the future, rather than the present. Deep knowledge about the evolution of state of the art, customers’ needs, and the legal and economic environment of the application scenarios are not enough. It is necessary to undertake future-oriented actions that encompass blazing new technological trails through research activities, performing analyses of customers’ long-term needs, exploring the economic prospects around their customers’ business development in five or ten year time, or acquiring knowledge about European policies to be applied in the coming years. Atos Research & Innovation, the Atos Origin Spain’s R&D hub, is a worldwide reference point in innovation for the whole Atos Origin group. Our work is focused on performing projects, usually within an international scope, that combine the most advanced technological developments with the economic exploitation of the R&D outcomes, based on an updated knowledge of the European policies and a deep awareness on human and societal aspects. Thanks to our extensive background on R&D&I, Atos Research & Innovation leverages, inside and outside Atos Origin, research activities that are being performed on the newest technologies, and takes the outcomes of this research to specific projects with customers, introducing innovative elements in their business processes. Activities Activities being performed in Atos Research & Innovation include: Identification of Open Research Challenges. Performance of R&D&I projects on Atos’ interest fields. Contributions to Technology Platforms related to the most relevant subjects for the company. Support to other Atos Origin units in performing projects for customers, based on our expertise and research assets

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The Science and Technology Facilities Council is one of Europe's largest multidisciplinary research organisations supporting scientists and engineers world-wide. The Council operates world-class, large scale research facilities and provides strategic advice to the UK government on their development. It also manages international research projects in support of a broad cross-section of the UK research community. The Council also directs, coordinates and funds research, education and training. The Council operates an e-infrastructure for its facilities and users which integrates with international facilities and user's organisational systems to support the complete research lifecycle from proposal writing through experiment design and operation, data gathering and analysis, publication and curation of data, results and publications. An integral part of this e-infrastructure for research is the UK National Grid Service (NGS) available to UK researchers for computing and data storage, and the European and broader international grid resources which are linked to it. To underpin this e-infrastructure the STFC undertakes an advanced ICT research programme to ensure that the latest advances in computer science are incorporated. This includes participation in EU funded research developing and exploiting Grid technologies.

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The National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) is the oldest and most prestigious technical university in Greece. It was founded in 1837 and has since been contributing to the progress of the engineering science in Greece, through the education of young engineers and its multi-faceted research and development activities. The University comprises nine departments, each one covering a different aspect of the engineering field, from electrical engineering and computer science to civil engineering. Over 700 academic staff members are involved in the education of more than 12,000 students in NTUA undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education programs. The Telecommunications Laboratory is part of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineers of NTUA, and is now the largest group in NTUA in terms of staff volume and research activities. The Laboratory members include 12 academic staff, 21 research fellows holding PhD degrees, and approximately 150 highly qualified graduate students working towards their PhD. In September 2000, the Telecommunications Laboratory was certified with ISO 9001. The Telecommunications Laboratory hosts a number of research groups, each focusing on a particular topic. In recent years, the Laboratory’s research profile has grown and diversified, to follow the rapid evolution of fixed and mobile communications, as well as computer communications systems. The Laboratory’s research activities span the full range of communications, from down to hardware and low level system design, up to applications and services. The majority of the research activities of the Laboratory are orchestrated by the NTUA Institute of Communications and Computer Systems. ICCS is a non-profit foundation associated with the ECE Dept. It has been established in 1989 by the Ministry of Education in order to promote research and development activities in all aspects of telecommunications systems and techniques, computer systems and their applications in a variety of fields.

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