Vision for a new style of online collaboration
Academics and students around the globe know how to get in touch using numerous forms of collaboration transcending both institutional and national boundaries. Though online collaboration already plays a prominent role in research and education, a new phase in advanced online collaboration is dawning. The coming period will see SURFnet give shape to its vision for the new style of online collaboration at various levels, starting with the launch of a new collaboration infrastructure called SURFconext in early January 2011.
SURFnet seeks to create a Ground-Breaking Collaboration Environment enabling higher education and research institutions to make secure and easy use of new forms of online collaboration, e-Learning and e-Research. Our ultimate objective is to offer an environment that provides an easy and secure means of collaboration across institutional and national boundaries, where open standards seamlessly connect online applications and services from a wide range of providers and institutions.
Trends
Concepts such as e-Science, e-Research and e-Learning attest to the fundamental role that the Internet now plays in science, research and the transfer of knowledge. In developing the Ground-Breaking Collaboration Environment, SURFnet has tapped into three key trends in international education and research.
- Acceleration and internationalisation of research through cloud
- Working in multidisciplinary teams
- Growing demand for the unimpeded transfer of knowledge
More on trends in education and research
Collaboration tools
The demand for new collaboration options is growing as a result. At the same time, an increasing number of improved online collaboration tools are becoming available. Tools not only designed for standard tasks but designed specifically for research and education applications. In the meantime education institutions are having to juggle limited internal resources. Institutions are being forced to make choices as a result of the rapid pace of cloud computing developments. What systems operate locally in the ICT centre? Which systems operate externally – ‘in the cloud’? How do you integrate third-party services into your own infrastructure?
This is yet another reason whereby collaboration with other institutions is required. Now, and in the long term too, considerable synergy benefits and costs savings can be achieved by jointly making smart choices for online applications which satisfy a number of standards. The groundwork has already been laid by the new SURFconext collaboration infrastructure.