GN4-2 is the proposed project for the second Specific Grant Agreement under the 68-month Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) established between the GÉANT Consortium and the European Commission in April 2015.This second phase of implementing the FPA will raise European research to the next level by promoting scientific excellence, access and re-use of research data. It will also drive European-wide cost efficiencies in scientific infrastructure by promoting interoperability with other e-infrastructures on an unprecedented scale. The FPA objective for the GÉANT Partnership is to contribute to effective European research by making Europe the best-connected region in the world. GÉANT must offer European researchers the network, communications facilities and application access that ensure the digital continuum necessary to conduct world-class research in collaboration with their peers, regardless of geographical location. GÉANT will maintain the operational excellence of the established GÉANT services, while achieving economies on the costs of the backbone network. The reliable, secure and state-of-the-art network services offered to researchers and other network users across Europe will remain exceptional. Massive data-transfer capacities required by extreme-scale instruments and by the penetration of big data in many areas of science will be prototyped with due consideration to the specific security and deployment challenges. Trust and identity is also prioritised with the introduction of a scalable operational model and with user requirements addressed in close concertation with the AARC and proposed AARC2 projects. GN4-2 developments are also guided by the vision of a future where a set of coherent and integrated European e-infrastructure services will offer convenient, seamless access for end-users through a common service catalogue, and facilitating the adoption of services offered by new e-infrastructure developments, such as the European Open Science Cloud.

The overall objective is to provide a stable environment for the implementation of GÉANT as the European Communications Commons for the European Research Area, which will provide the best possible digital infrastructure to ensure that Europe remains in the forefront of research. GÉANT’s extensive and long-standing contacts with large data disciplines such as biology, radioastronomy and high-energy physics help shape the evolution of the networking facilities required. This is complemented by partner contacts with research domains that are new users of high-performance networks and services, such as: digital preservation, real-time art and humanities. The vision is to position the GÉANT partnership optimally to achieve the strategic objectives of the FPA while ensuring the continuity and improvement of the services successfully offered under the GN3plus FP7 project. The extensive experience of the GÉANT partnership in providing high-quality and innovative services has been applied to the preparation phase of this proposal. The following GN4-1 work package objectives deserve to be highlighted: • Maintain and enhance the production service and achieve cost reductions without negative effects on network service levels. • Coordinate with the other European e-infrastructure efforts both individually and in the framework of the increased coordination effort. • Prepare a new round of Open Call projects to start immediately after the end of the GN4-1 project. • Expand the footprint and the depth of services offered to roaming users with enhanced trust and identity services through Federation as a Service and with group and attribute management added to eduGAIN. • Develop online real-time services to improve the ease and function of videconferencing, open learning support and general multimedia use. • Review the existing service catalogue using the Product Lifecycle Management process to assess the cost/benefits of each carefully to define the future service strategy.