CERN openlab and its partners - a unique collaboration
Collaborating with industry is a long-standing tradition at CERN. CERN openlab is a unique example of a structure for CERN and industry to jointly carry out large-scale research and development in the field of information technologies. An initiative perceived by some as rather new, as already old by others, the openlab this year celebrates its 10th anniversary.
CERN openlab 10th birthday celebration on 3 May 2011, on the occasion of its annual Board of Sponsors meeting, in the presence of the CERN Director-General, the partners, as well as past and present team members. © Fons Rademakers (CERN Photo Club).
The idea of openlab started with Manuel Delfino, who was the head of the IT Department at the start of the millennium. “Links with industry were already in place in the computing field but lacked a general framework” explains François Fluckiger, the manager of openlab since its inception. For example, benchmarking of cutting-edge IT products were carried out and there was specific joint developments. But they were short-term and that were limited in scope undertakings.
The openlab idea is to form a collaborative venture that could take a long-term perspective through a common framework: same duration for the collaborations, same level of contribution from industry. This led to partnership agreements with industry’s leading companies that were initially planned to last three years, a sufficient delay to build solid teams with ambitious objectives, and enable CERN to hire young engineers and scientists to work on the common projects.
“So in April 2001, CERN wrote to half a dozen major companies inviting them to join this exciting new undertaking as founding members. By June, three had already signed up, including Intel and Enterasys. CERN openlab was born!” recalls François Fluckiger.
The guiding principles of openlab were then publicly announced which, despite cosmetic changes, have remained valid to this day. Over the 10 years, 11 companies have participated in openlab. Three of them, Intel, HP and Oracle, have been involved since the early days of openlab and, together with Siemens, form the current group of active partners. Openlab IV, the next phase of openlab, starts in January 2012 with great plans to inject new ideas into computing for CERN and the LHC.
