Cloud computing and shared resources dominated much of the discussions at the Internet2 Spring Member Meeting in Arlington, Virginia recently, where ORION was invited to update members on the new value-added services ORION is deploying to Ontario institutions.

With over 700 attendees made up of a cross section of leaders and innovators from around the world, the conference is hosted by Internet2, the national advanced networking organization led by the U.S. research and education community.

President and CEO Phil Baker was invited to join an international roundtable of leaders from National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and shared Canada's and Ontario's experience, with ORION. The roundtable compared and contrasted the changes occurring among NRENs around the world, exploring the transformative nature of NRENs and also the transitional points and challenges that many NRENs face.

Baker and Blair Brenot, ORION's Technology Innovation Leader, were also invited to present on ORION's value-added services to the Internet2 K20 community, including a discussion of the O3 Collaboration service, data storage and backup services, and a soon-to-be-launched interactive media platform for postsecondary institutions.

Other sessions at the conference included several addressing network technology innovations, research applications adn e-service initiatives, and opportunities and challenges made available via government broadband funding and stimulus programs.

Delegates engaged in extensive discussions on the evolving tools and processes enabling collaborative activities that support research and education. Several groups provided progress updates on inter-federation of global R&E communities, and how they are more successful as a result of their ability to better access shared collaboration services. These groups discussed the challenges confronted and solved in getting services "Shibbolized", as well as their experiences defining policy around areas such as attribute release and privacy.

As cloud computing and virtualization become mainstream, campuses and service providers alike are rethinking the data centre in light of the benefits and challenges which cloud computing will bring. This topic surfaced in a variety of sessions this year, and one assertion that emerged was the need for the R&E community to influence the future of the cloud by articulating the requirement that cloud computing vendors standardize the ways institutions interface with and access these technologies and services.

View some of the presentations online at http://events.internet2.edu/2010/spring-mm.