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CERN Openlab to tackle cloud challenges

Openlab, a collaboration between CERN and five companies to develop technology to underpin the Large Hadron Collider experiment, will next concentrate on challenges such as cloud computing.Openlab, which involves collaborative research between CERN and HP, Huawei, Intel, Oracle, and Siemens, officially went into its fourth phase on Wednesday.
Written by Tom Espiner, Contributor

Openlab, a collaboration between CERN and five companies to develop technology to underpin the Large Hadron Collider experiment, will next concentrate on challenges such as cloud computing.

Openlab, which involves collaborative research between CERN and HP, Huawei, Intel, Oracle, and Siemens, officially went into its fourth phase on Wednesday.

"During the next three years, CERN is preparing the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] for operating at higher energy and luminosity," CERN director general Rolf Heuer said in a statement. "This fourth phase will be instrumental in addressing the increased computing challenges in an innovative way."

The fourth phase will focus on topics such as cloud computing, business analytics, hardware, and security for network devices. The companies will put around eight million Swiss Francs (£5m) over the next three years into the project.

HP will develop network virtualisation products, and Huawei will look at cloud storage. Intel will focus on performance, energy efficiency and security. Oracle will look at data management, and Siemens will research business intelligence and analytics.

Projects such as those at CERN generate large amounts of data — the LHC produces roughly 20 million gigabytes of data per year.

The LHC is involved in projects such as the search for the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle that is crucial to a group of theories called the Standard Model of physics. The Higgs boson explains mass in the Standard Model.

Physicists around the world are becoming more certain about proving the existence of the elementary Higgs particle. Physicists from the Tevatron experiment at Fermilab near Chicago presented findings on Tuesday for a mass between 115-135 GeV, similar to results found at CERN, physicist Pauline Gagnon said in a blog post.

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