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MOMENTUM OF INNOVATION

7.6. E-infrastructures

In recent decades, the international embeddedness and professional excellence of scientific research have been enabled by
various info-communication technology (ICT) developments and applications. Therefore, it is of strategic importance
to keep the ICT infrastructure at a high technological level for Hungarian institutions and businesses involved in RDI. In
this domain the main aim is to preserve network operability and continuously improve the level of service, which form
part of the core activities of the Governmental Information Technology Agency (KIFÜ). Currently, the commonly main-
tained GEANT network ensures the high-speed connection between member states’ national networks.

Apart from the stable functioning of the network, the collection, storage, processing and analysis of scientific results also
demand for very extensive and reliable computing capacity. This is especially true of the collection, storage and immediate
or delayed processing of big data generated by large-scale infrastructures. As a result of the KIFÜ’s capacity development
programme for universities, the users (research groups) have gained a competitive advantage compared to the neighbouring
countries.

The situation has been further improved by the HAS Wigner Research Centre for Physics in Csillebérc, Budapest, by de-
ploying a 4 MW unit of the Wigner Data Centre. Currently, the Data Centre mainly supports the particle physics research
in CERN, but the Hungarian researcher community also has additional capacities provided by HAS Cloud and Wigner
Cloud services. Apart from ensuring the daily use, the HAS Cloud unit operated by MTA SZTAKI can also be used for
performing development tasks.

Initially, e-infrastructure mainly supported researchers in the field of physical sciences, but today researchers from the
fields of medicine, life sciences, humanities and social sciences have not only caught up with but also surpassed natural
scientists by presenting new needs which pose new challenges to the designers and operators of e-infrastructures.

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