In late June, as part of the first EGEE-III review, an EC-appointed review panel listened to two days of presentations about the state and direction of the project and followed the live demonstrations of applications and software developments.

The large scale of the infrastructure, the scope of the engagement with a diverse user community and a successful comprehensive training programme were commended by the review panel. The progress made on interoperability, the adoption of OGF standards in production grids, IPv6 support and the better balance between middleware development, testing and deployment were also noted.

The panel commended the project for planning in advance for the transition to the European Grid Initiative (EGI). All of the suggested changes to the Description of Work for transitioning to EGI during the next year – as well as the deliverables and milestones – were approved.

While the full details of how EGI will come in are still being finalized, this endorsement gives the project added confidence that it is headed in the right direction to meet its goals. The most important of which is to work with the projects coming after EGEE to ensure that there is a smooth, continued support of the infrastructure into EGI. The project is rated as having made "good to excellent progress" (the top rating available) and 19 recommendations were made, which will be the subject of a dedicated face-to-face meeting of the activity managers in early September.

An important checkpoint in preparing for EGI will be the EGEE'09 conference in Barcelona on 21–25 September. Many of the activities will be using the meeting to report on their progress in implementing the changes needed for the transition to EGI and planning the activity for the final six months of the project. The community will also be elaborating details of the EC projects that will be submitted to continue the work started within EGEE.

After this event we will have a clearer picture of which NGIs will be contributing to the infrastructure and who will be providing the critical EGI services. The Specialized Support Centres will have established their links with their European-wide community stakeholders and the support they will be obtaining from interested NGIs. The middleware consortia will also be able to present their view as to how European middleware will evolve in the EGI era.

Useful links

EGEE-III first review: http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=53198
EGI: http://web.eu-egi.eu/