User interaction / knowledge dissemination

As in previous years, almost all NRENs provide some form of training courses to their users, and most organise national user conferences. For further information about such activities and the associated resources that NRENs make available to their users, see the separate TF-CPR Compendium:

www.terena.org/activities/tf-cpr/compendium.

Some of the information gathered in that document is also of interest for the purposes of this Compendium; in particular, which topics organisations indicated as being (very) important for Communications/PR efforts in 2011/2012. This provides an indication of where the NRENs’ priorities lie.

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

Network & connectivity services NREN in general (corporate communications) Authentication & ‘mobility service‘

Security services IPv6 Network collaboration tools & conferencing eduroam Housing – storage – hosting – content delivery services User interaction – knowledge dissemination Lambda service End-2-end service Internal communications Network computing resources E-learning / distance teaching & learning: e-research

0%

Planned social media tools Used social media tools

Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Blog on NREN

Another interesting area is the use of social media. An increasing number of NRENs intend to use, or already use, social media in their communication activities.

The use of social media by NRENs has grown. In 2009, almost 65% said they did not use social media at all, compared to 23% in 2010. As was the case in 2009, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are the most frequently used social media tools.

Plans for social media tools in 2011 were also investigated. Almost every NREN is planning to use social media tools in 2010. In addition to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, the two extra tools to be used most are LinkedIn and website blogs.

Graph 5.8.1 – NREN priorities in communications/PR

Graph 5.8.2 – NREN use of social media tools

NRENs function as centres of excellence, in service of their clients. This year’s Compendium survey has identified a number of new services being provided by NRENs under the general heading of ’brokerage‘, i.e. when a NREN uses its expertise and knowledge to engage with the market on behalf of its clients.

A prime example of such brokerage is software licensing, whereby NRENs can negotiate bulk deals at the national level for generic, e-learning and other applications. This is probably an area in which NRENs can achieve considerable

TERENA Compendium of National Research and Education Networks In Europe /Other services

savings for their customers and in which there is potential for expansion, especially given the current economic climate.

NRENs are also undertaking framework procurements for network and related equipment. These procurements are often directed primarily at NREN requirements, though client institutions can use the negotiated terms to their advantage by purchasing equipment for their own networks. Maintenance and support contracts are often part of such frameworks; in some cases, there is a demand for the NRENs to manage these contracts as well.

Country Broker services, current Broker services, planned Premium services New services planned for 2011 GÉANT partner countries

Austria no

Belgium no consultancy, security

audits Antispam Pro, DNSSEC

Bulgaria no

Croatia no

Cyprus no

Czech Republic no

Denmark no

Estonia planned Federated AAI

Finland no consultancy HD video conferencing bridge.

France no VoIP to PSTN; H323/SIP MCU videoconferencing with RMS

Germany no Secure Doodle Service

Greece Software licencing We plan to introduce a plethora of SaaS services, PaaS, as well as elastic cloud IaaS, in addition to the currently VPS service offered. Furthermore, we anticipate introducing the ‘scientific’ SaaS, which will enable researchers to access instances of scientific commercial tools that might not be affordable of a small institution.

Hungary no Improvement on several services

Iceland no

Ireland Software licensing, equipment procurement, other

Security audits National mobile broadband service.

National data storage service.

Most NRENs organise national user conferences as well as training courses for specific user-groups. The situation has not changed much since last year and is therefore not included in this year’s Compendium; information on individual NRENs is available at www.terena.org/compendium. A number of NRENs were planning to introduce several new services in 2011. Exchanging information about new services being developed or introduced in some NRENs could be an important way of stimulating the adoption of these services in different countries.

Table 5.8.3 – Special NREN services

TERENA Compendium of National Research and Education Networks In Europe /Other services

Israel no

Italy Limited common

procurement for specific projects

HD videoconferencing MCU

Latvia no consultancy

Lithuania no

Luxembourg no

Montenegro no Centralized VPN for telecommuters

Netherlands planned Brokering for cloud

services such as storage and virtualization, also for SaaS services including Google Apps, Sakai, etc.

SURFconext, Mobile

Norway Software licensing, equipment procurement

consultancy, security audits

Lecture storage and distribution infrastructure, High-Availability infrastructure for services, Unified Communication infrastructure

Poland Equipment procurement consultancy ,security

audits

Portugal no Storage

Romania no

Slovakia no

Slovenia no Ethernet Private Line Service, Cloud Storage, Cloud Computing, Filesender, LDAP/IdP hosting,

Radius hosting Spain Software licensing,

equipment procurement

consultancy 1. Remote monitoring of services in our constituency, plus a panel to access data about services and manage them.

2. Wavelengths over the new DF network, RedIRIS-NOVA.

Sweden no

Switzerland no Group collaboration service

Turkey no

United Kingdom Equipment procurement

Country Broker services, current Broker services, planned Premium services New services planned for 2011 GÉANT partner countries

Table 5.8.3 – continued

TERENA Compendium of National Research and Education Networks In Europe /Other services

Country Premium services New services planned for 2011 Other countries

Azerbaijan consultancy, security

audits eduroam, Identity Federation Georgia consultancy

Serbia consultancy

Brazil Telepresence

Canada Peering service with major content providers including Google and Amazon

Kazakhstan KazRENA already issues ISIC/ITIC cards for Kazakhstan University students and teachers. KazRENA is currently planning to introduce eduroam.

Korea New TTS(NREN Information Management System), etc

Kyrgyzstan consultancy Housing

New Zealand Aggregated Commodity Internet

Table 5.8.3 – continued

TERENA Compendium of National Research and Education Networks In Europe /Other services

TERENA Compendium of National Research and Education Networks In Europe / Funding and staffing