Although it may not be central to the name, the BiG Grid project in the Netherlands is seeking to advance from its grid roots in order to be more flexible and attuned with the needs of its user base of European researchers. Accordingly, the project is making part of its hardware cloud accessible.
According to Arien Van Rijn, Chairman of the executive team, “this work is designed to complement rather than replace existing research infrastructures. There’s a whole ecosystem of facilities based on ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and we want the BiG Grid infrastructure to be part of the wider ICT infrastructure for scientific research.”
The BiG Grid project, which is a joint effort between Nihef (National Insitute for Subatomic Physics) and NBIC (Netherlands Bioinformatics Center) as well as with support from the National Computing Facilities Foundation has stated a goal to “build and roll out a nationwide, grid-based, e-science infrastructure” says Van Rijn.