User community support and expansion

The overall goal of this activity (NA4) is to ensure that Grid technology and the EGEE infrastructure are used successfully by a broad spectrum of scientific collaborations.  The activity focuses its efforts in three areas:

• Support: To ensure effective use of the Grid infrastructure, this activity provides application porting consulting, day-to-day user support including documentation, and support for virtual organisation management and managers.

• Strategic Discipline Clusters: To maximize the penetration of Grid technology into selected, key scientific disciplines, seven clusters will ensure that the EGEE platform meets the scalability, reliability, and functionality requirements for their respective scientific areas through focussed support, intensive testing, and development of high-level application services.

• Community Building: To encourage Grid user communities to be as self-reliant as possible, the activity will support dialog within and between user communities through topical and disciplinary meetings.  The activity will also coordinate the use of Grid technologies in a scientific area and support new user communities as appropriate.

Vigorous programmes in each of these areas will increase the attractiveness of the EGEE infrastructure, accelerate the adoption of Grid technologies, and increase the satisfaction of those currently using the EGEE production service.
A coordination task, crucial for the success of the activity, will ensure that the provided services are well-managed in order to maximize their impact on and within user communities and ensure that virtual organisations can efficiently find the help they need during all phases of their development.