RedCLARA is leading the Middleware for Collaborative Applications and Global Virtual Communities (MAGIC) project, thanks to the success of the ELCIRA (Europe Latin America Collaborative e-Infrastructure for Research Activities) project in Latin America and its integration with Europe. It is a global collaborative project that will significantly improve the capacity of researchers and college students across the globe to collaborate among themselves for the next two years. The initiative was approved by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 program and it began its activities in May.

The goal is to share positive results and lessons learned through the ELCIRA project with the academic networks from other regions. Thus, it seeks to establish a set of agreements between the participating regions with the goal to consolidate and fill the middleware blocks necessary to the establishment of a real time market and application services for international and intercontinental research groups. This will facilitate the mobility and the work of global scientific communities.

RNP took part actively and contributed for ELCIRA’s success and is currently a member of MAGIC. “This project brings an even greater challenge, because it will address the themes cloud computing, global science communities, real-time collaboration, in addition to identity management. The topics will be developed in a collaborative manner by academic networks in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Oceania, Middle East and Latin America, with a larger participation by RNP”, Service Management Deputy Director Antônio Carlos Fernandes Nunes states.

Project work packages

Magic will act on four fronts to reach the main goal to improve the capacity of researchers and college students across the world to collaborate among themselves. Get to know MAGIC’s proposals and RNP’s performance.

1. Mobility platforms

The goal is to foster the platforms development that allow the mobility of people and direct access to the services. For this, it will be necessary to deploy interconnected identity federations via eduGAIN, spreading eduroam for the sharing between partner regions. According to the project’s organization, RNP leadership has been crucial for the success of eduroam and the identity federations’ formation and deployment.

Service Manager Leandro Guimarães believes that MAGIC came to consolidate RNP role as a global reference in identity management. “With the exceeded challenge in the ELCIRA project, in which four new federations and seven eduroam roaming operators were delivered  to academic networks in Latin America, we moved forward, spreading our experience so the researchers, professors and students may be increasingly connected”, he highlighted.

2. Standards for cloud provisioning and groupware

Developing a model for interoperation amongst NREN cloud applications markets of the participating world regions, based on the cloud provisioning and taking advantage of applications already developed and run by networks across different continents. The goal is to create a global application market for collaborative tools and services, where NRENs provide services among themselves throughout the world, using a single authentication mechanism and one global federated groupware that facilitates the use of collaborative applications.  

The offer of cloud services by the academic networks is already a reality. Now, MAGIC’s goal is to allow these services to be integrated and offered among the global academic networks. “The intention is to take advantage of the identity federations to allow a greater integration amongst the cloud services offered by each academic network, recommending a set of standard attributes for authorization among cloud service providers. Lastly, to draw and deploy a pilot for interoperability of these services offers, that, thus, will reach a global scale, which benefits all of the Science, Technology and Innovation communities”, Cloud Computing Expert Ricardo Makino stressed.

3. Real-time applications

In this project package, it is intended to spread information, leveling knowledge in order to enable the adoption of real-time applications (telephony and video conferencing) among various regions of the world. Thus, it will be possible to ensure interoperability amongst solutions from manufacturers and different communication protocols. This goal shall be reached by stimulating the adoption of standards such as those proposed by the Global CEOs Forum. As a final result, these activities will facilitate the integration of researchers from different locations across the world.

According to RNP Services Expert Alex Galhano, the organization has taken part actively in global actions connected to real-time communication and IP telephony for the last few years, in the context of academic networks. “We deployed PIT VoIP, for RedClara, we created and applied a training on voice over IP for the NRENs connected to this organization. We adhered to NRENum.net of GÉANT Association making this service exceeded the European borders. We are one of the most active participants on the Global CEOs Forum, integrating G-RTC, group discussing a model of service for telephony and videoconference interconnection between various manufacturers and protocols. Simultaneously, our fone@RNP service was totally remodeled and expanded, doubling the size in terms of clients and triplicating the minutes transported. The knowledge and experience accumulated over the years qualifies us to contribute to global audacious projects like MAGIC”, Galhano noted.

4. Global science communities

Fostering the collaborative work of the global science communities, actively promoting the participation of researchers from Latin America and other regions in the summonses by the European Commission and other international financing agencies. This will facilitate the diffusion of the high impact calls over the regions participating in MAGIC, as well as in other collaborative activities.

“Researchers usually look for RNP for guidance on how to submit proposals for the European Commission. We offer support for other researchers to participate in projects with this same financing”, explains the Communities and Advanced Applications Manager Leandro Ciuffo.

Networks participating in MAGIC

• RedCLARA (Latin-America Advanced Networks Cooperation), Uruguay (Coordinator);
• GÉANT, United Kingdom and Holland;
• RNP (Brazilian National Research and Educational Network), Brazil;
• RENATA (Red Nacional de Tecnología Avanzada), Colombia;
• REUNA (Red Universitaria Nacional), Chile;
• CEDIA (Consorcio Ecuatoriano para el Desarrollo de Internet Avanzado), Ecuador;
• CUDI (Corporación Universitaria para el Desarrollo de Internet, A.C.), Mexico;
• UbuntuNet Alliance, Malaui;
• West and Central African Research and Education Network, Ghana;
• ASREN (Arab States Research and Education Network), Jordan;
• CESNET (Czech Education and Scientific Network), Czech Republic;
• GRENET (Greek Research and Technology Network), Greece;
• SURFnet, Holland;
• CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research), South Africa;
• RENATER (Reseau National de l’Enseignement et la Recherche), France;
• NIIFI (National Information Infrastructure Development Institute), Hungary;
• CKLN (Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network), Grenada;
• NITC (National Information Technology Center), Kyrgyzstan;
• TEIN*CC (TEIN* Cooperation Center), Korea.