Access the power of Grid

Karlsruhe, Germany – January 21, 2009

The g- Eclipse Consortium today announced the first major release of the g- Eclipse framework. The g- Eclipse framework provides an easy-to-use workbench to access worldwide Grid and Cloud infrastructures. These new emerging infrastructures are seen as key to the future IT world allowing end-users to utilise available computing and data  resources dynamically and on-demand. The g- Eclipse project provides a graphical workbench, which enables seamless access to such worldwide infrastructures with the same simplicity as users accessing the Internet from their web-browsers. The g- Eclipse Consortium was supported by the European Commission in the 6th Framework Programme in the field of research, technological development and demonstration.

The key feature of the g- Eclipse workbench is its proven independence from the underlying Grid and Cloud technology. “We started with the development of the g- Eclipse ecosystem with the goal to access available scientific Grid infrastructures, such as the one built by physicists at CERN to analyse the large amount of data generated by the new LHC accelerator in Geneva. With the help of g- Eclipse, scientists can use this infrastructure more intuitively and improve their productivity and scientific results.” says Harald Kornmayer (NEC Laboratories Europe), initiator and lead of the g- Eclipse project. The g- Eclipse framework currently supports two European middlewares – gLite for scientific domains and GRIA used by industry and commerce. Additionally, support for the Cloud offering from Amazon Web Services is available.

“g- Eclipse is a great tool for scientists, who want to work efficiently on the Grid. It can help with many day-to-day tasks, supporting the user by relieving her/him from tedious basic level tasks. It is therefore an important ingredient of any future Grid infrastructure.” says Dieter Kranzlmüller, director of the Leibniz-Rechenzentrum of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and strategic director of the European Grid Initiative (EGI) project.