Thematic areas supported

Thematic areas are formed and continuously evolving from the need of the GÉANT community.

Network Services and Technologies

This area is concerned with organisational aspects, coordination and exchange of best practice regarding the provisioning and delivering of network services. Work in this area supports research on network technology and innovative network services. Campus networking is included in this area.

SIG-NGN: Next Generation Networking - knowledge exchange and collaboration on developments in networking technologies.

SIG-NOC: Network Operations​ Centres​ - Sharing and creating common best practices for the organisation and management of Network Operations Centres

SIG-PMV: Performance Monitoring and Verification - Identifying and establishing best practices for wired/wireless networks

Security

This is a broad area, concerned with the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information and information systems. GÉANT's activities include defining and implementing appropriate security requirements for various types of systems. One requirement common to many systems is incident response: detecting and investigating failures and restoring the system to its intended security state.

SIG-ISM: Information Security Management - Developing security expertise and excellence within the NREN community​

TF-CSIRT: Computer Security Incident Response Teams - Coordinating training, services​​​ and knowledge-exchange for security teams worldwide

WISE: a global trust community where security experts share information and work together, creating collaboration among different e-infrastructures. 

Trust and Identity

Middleware is a general term that in this context refers to the layer between the network and the applications running on it. Middleware provides an interface to, and between, the applications, easing their interoperability, simplifying access by users, and allowing better management. GÈANT's middleware activities focus on identity management federations, harmonisation and standardisation of interfaces, access control, service location and diagnostics, and involve liaison with other communities when relevant. This area also addresses user and application mobility in a networked environment.

TF-DPR: Data Protection Regulation​​ - Working with NRENs to meet data protection regulation requirements (DORMANT)

REFEDS: the Research and Education FEDerations group - is to be the voice that articulates the mutual needs of research and education identity federations worldwide.

Media Services

This area encompasses information exchange and best practice in traditional and web-based collaboration, webcasting and video-on-demand solutions, while at the same time providing a platform for activities supporting live media and videoconferencing. GÈANT’s activities in this field vary from the investigation of next generation real-time communication services to the establishment of rich media production and recording solutions, metadata and content repositories as well as distribution platforms.

SIG-Multimedia: Multimedia Applications​​ - Facilitating technology and service interoperability and sharing knowledge about multimedia solutions

NPAPWS: Network Performing Arts Production Workshop

Cloud Services

Virtualisation generally refers to abstraction of resources, usually creating a logical view of resources while hiding the underlying arrangement of various physical elements including storage, hardware, servers and networking components. This area also includes the investigation of in-house services using private clouds and of services outsourced to public clouds.

S​IG-CISS: Cloudy Interoperable Software Stacks​ - Sharing and collaborating on cloud infrastructure software stacks, platforms and research workflows

Organisational services

Dealing with organisational, information gathering/exchange and delivery aspects of services provided to the community and by the community.

SIG-Marcomms: Marketing Communications​ - Sharing and collaborating on marketing, communications and public relations

SIG-MSP: Management of Serv​​​ice Portfolios​ - Supporting management across the product life cycle and sharing service ideas

Public Affairs Workshop

Research Engagement Development

Developing methods for NRENs to engage with research communities.  The focus of the group is on developing the ‘business development’ aspects that NRENs can perform in order to grow their business, i.e towards research communities.  The group crosses thematic and technical areas which are covered by other task forces and SIGs. The key aim for the group is to produce a guide for NRENs on how to setup a research engagement function: typical business models, template job descriptions, communities to target, ways in which to target and how the research engagement forum integrates into the wider R&E community. A new concept for face to face meetings is to have business development training integrated in a day long session, which also covers latest trends or developments as well as a workshop.

TF-RED: Research Engagement Development​ - Developing methods for NRENs to engage with research communities.

Educational services and technologies

This activity focuses on collaboration across the education sector on commonly identified topic areas, providing coordinated approach to improve NREN educational services and activities.

TF-EDU: Educational activities and services

SIG-​TNE: Transnational Education​​ - Addressing technological challenges in the delivery of international education