CETIC

1. Service Oriented Architectures

Damien HUBAUX, Michael Van de Borne, Stéphane Mouton — 2009-03-27T16:06:51Z

Concepts

High performance computing has evolved from the use of supercomputers to the use of clusters. Grid Computing is a logical continuation of this change. Using the Web, the Grid aims to make these interoperable computing resources / storage so they are as easily accessible as electricity.

In line with Grid computing, the idea of offering more than infrastructure, but also software services on demand made its way. Many software vendors are planning to adopt the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model. It becomes a natural idea to compose these services to provide more advanced ones.

The spread of Web services and virtualization technologies have also enabled the emergence of Cloud Computing. The computing infrastructure nowadays becomes part of the network.

All the technologies mentioned above are following a rapid evolution, and CETIC follows them through numerous research projects where its expertise is recognized.

Projects

Project	Expertise
Convergence - CE-IQS	ISDE-1 Distributed system based on "Service-Oriented Knowledge Utilities" (Soku) ISDE-2 Distributed file systems.
BEinGRID	Applications in real conditions, operating all the software layers of the Grid Study of business model, taking into account the production and marketing constraints
AssessGrid	Breakdown risks assessment, distributing tasks to reduce risk
HPC4U	Test environment for migration and checkpointing tools developed within the project Expertise in lower layers of the HPC software stack
GridTrust	Test environment for validating the performance of security applications, advanced rights, etc.
Orage	Decentralized management for distributed systems

2. Intelligent Content and Semantics

Damien HUBAUX, Joseph Roumier — 2009-03-27T16:05:48Z

Nowadays, companies must keep control on the increasing amount of information they deal with. The Intelligent Content & Semantic Team (ICS) at CETIC develops methods and tools for information management in businesses. It targets unstructured information contained both on the Internet and private LANs.

Overview

Some intrinsic features of information make it difficult to manage. With the advent of the Internet and Integrated Enterprise Information Systems, digital content has become overwhelmingly abundant, while it is still poorly structured and constantly changing.

In this context, the Intelligent Content & Semantic (ICS) Team at CETIC focuses its research on methods and tools for information management and helps companies to extract precise knowledge from their unstructured data. These activities are part of the Walloon Region funded project CETIC-CEIQS (Centre of Expertise in Engineering and Quality of Systems).

Expertise

Knowledge extraction from unstructured content
Search engines
Semantic Web concepts and tools
Web Services standards and protocols

Tools

In order to support the methodologies developed in its projects, the team is developing tools and prototypes like Retroweb, a tool for web data extraction, or DocIndexer, a semantic document search engine.

Services offered to companies

CETIC cluster

Damien HUBAUX, Stéphane Mouton — 2006-10-27T14:51:38Z

The computing cluster of CETIC represents an opportunity for enterprises wishing to adapt faster to new computing paradigms such as SOA, "Grid" or "Cloud" technologies.

Charleroi SuperComputing Center

Since October 2006, the cluster has moved to a technical room providig better capacities (power, air conditioning, security). Purchase and installation of equipment for this room has been done in close coordination with CENAERO which settled its own cluster in the same room. This way the two research centres optimise their spending and gather their resources.

Characteristics

The CETIC cluster is made of 34 bi and quadri-processors interconected servers. Most of the cluster servers work under Linux and provide together a computing power of around 900 gigaflops (i.e. 900 billions operations per second) and a storage capacity of 10 Terabytes. A quadri-processor server is equipped 32Gb of RAM for applications requiring a large amount of memory.

The cluster architecture is evolutionary, to easily allow increase of its storage capacity or computing power.

A ground for experimentation

The architecture of the cluster was elaborated with versatility in mind. Thus, if all the components of the cluster are networked with ethernet cards like those used for desktop computers, several servers are connected by Infiniband and other by Dolphin SCI to evaluate those technologies. Finally, the large amount of disk space not only make easier to run several projects in the same time but also allows to conduct experiments on data storage.

Open to enterprises and projects

The cluster allows CETIC to perform tests and to build proofs of concept for enterprises. The role of the cluster is also to support CETIC research activities, especially through projects of the 6th Framework-Programme of the European Union.

Links and contacts

Web portal of the cluster
To contact the cluster system administrators : admingrid@cetic.be

3. Open Source Software Technologies

Damien HUBAUX, Robert Viseur — 2004-04-14T10:14:22Z

Free and Open Source Software ?

According to the Free Software Foundation, free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. It refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software :

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Open Source Software pretty similar to Free Software. More precisely, according to Open Source Initiative, an Open Source Software does not just mean access to the source code. So the distribution terms of Open Source Software must comply with ten criterias including the free redistribution, the access to source code or the integrity of the author's source code.

Is Free and Open Source Software good for you ?

The Free and Open Source Software is recognized for its relialibility, support and reduced costs.

Reliability: The source code of Free and Open Source Software is read by large communities of contributors, so bugs and failures are quickly found and corrected. Companies as Reasoning -provider of automated software inspection services- often point to the quality of code in the Free and Open Source Softwares.

Support: Free and Open Source Softwares are supported by large communities of users. Some of these communities are supported by large companies.

Cost: Free and Open Source Software can be sold, but there is no licence fee per user or per computer. So the purchase costs are reduced. Concerning administration and migration costs, it depends of your business (needs, constraints, internal competences and so on). Consequently, a study by Free and Open Source expert before migration is advised.