Members of the Global Research and Education (R&E) Network CEO Forum recently met for a two-day meeting in Santiago, Chile where they discussed and sought to find solutions to challenges rocking the global research and education community such as internet security and NREN funding.
The Global R&E Network CEO Forum is a grouping of Chief Executives from Regional Research and Education networks of AARNet (Australia), CANARIE (Canada), CERNET (China), CUDI (Mexico), GÉANT Association (Europe), DFN (Germany), Internet2 (USA), NORDUnet (European Nordics), REANNZ (New Zealand), RedCLARA (Latin America), RENATER (France), RNP (Brazil), SANReN (South Africa), SINET (Japan), SURFnet (The Netherlands), and the UbuntuNet Alliance (Southern and Eastern Africa).
The Santiago meeting, held on 17-19 February 2016 and hosted by RedCLARA, the Research and Education Network of Latin America was the seventh meeting for the Forum which previously met in Munich, Germany in July 2015.
During the latest meeting, members of the forum deliberated on a number of pertinent issues including on cyber security concerns being faced by Research and Education networking organizations and members discussed and shared different security strategies and experiences.
In addition, the forum also took time to look into the broad range of financial challenges associated with sustainably operating a Research and Education Network organization. On this, the Forum agreed to create a subgroup that will bring together Chief Financial Officers of Research and Education Networking organisations to share and benchmark best practices.
Another item on the gathering’s agenda was the reviewing of the recently launched “In the Field” blog, which the members commended for exposing global research collaborations. To ensure the sustainability of the blog, which has seen over 64 research collaboration stories being published and 6000 page views from close to 100 countries being registered since its launch in October 2015, the forum participants pledged to increase their contributions and promote the blog.
The group also revealed that it is planning a global summit in the third quarter of 2016 to pull together all products and solution capabilities of the network layer for all 117 Research and Education Networks across the world in order to facilitate and simplify the global collaboration among users by stimulating the availability and interoperability in areas like video, storage and the cloud.
The next meeting of the Global Research and Education Network CEO forum is scheduled to take place place in Vancouver, Canada in July 2016.