Welcome to CONCORD

During the past decade, public distributed computing initiatives have demonstrated that large communities of volunteers can collectively provide computing capabilities comparable to those of traditional high-performance computing infrastructures. Projects such as SETI@home, Folding@Home, ClimatePrediction.net and other BOINC-based initiatives have illustrated the tremendous potential of harnessing idle computational resources distributed across millions of personal computers connected through the Internet.

While these initiatives have achieved remarkable scientific successes, the growing scale and complexity of distributed research applications introduce new technical, organisational and societal challenges. Future distributed computing platforms must address issues related to scalability, reliability, security, fault tolerance, energy efficiency, resource management and long-term sustainability while remaining accessible to both researchers and the general public.

CONCORD (Collaborative Online Computing for Research and Development) brings together leading European experts in distributed systems, grid infrastructures, volunteer computing, data-intensive research and advanced network services. The Action seeks to establish a common framework for collaboration between academic institutions, research centres and industry stakeholders involved in the development of the next generation of public computing infrastructures.

Particular attention is devoted to the investigation of large-scale distributed environments capable of supporting scientific discovery, medical research, environmental modelling, engineering applications, digital preservation and emerging forms of collaborative computing. The Action promotes the exchange of knowledge, best practices and technical expertise across disciplinary and national boundaries.

Through a combination of workshops, joint research activities, training events and dissemination initiatives, CONCORD aims to strengthen the European Research Area and contribute to the definition of future models for open, large-scale and citizen-driven distributed computing.