Shared Storage and Services
The CIC CIOs are exploring some exciting possibilities involving shared storage.
Shared Data Storage: In order to realize efficiencies of collaboration as well as to relieve some pressures on local data centers, a testbed is in development at IU, PSU, Iowa, MSU, OSU, and UIUC as a proof-of-concept of the proposed storage architecture and practices. The testbed will run through April 2010, after which a report and recommendation will be submitted to the CIC CIOs to inform possible future action
Big Digital Machine (BDM): In fall 2009, the CIC universities’ CIOs and Library Directors agreed to co-invest in a small scale exploratory project dubbed “Big Digital Machine” or BDM, led by Indiana University. The BDM is intended to help identify paths and hopeful insights for future models of an open, interoperable, sustainable, enterprise-level system for dissemination of scholarship and will build upon the good work of established national projects related to the publishing and dissemination of scholarship including Connexions, Duraspace, and the Public Knowledge Initiative.
The BDM also builds upon several successful CIC ventures: the agreement with Google to digitize 10 million book volumes; the HathiTrust, a multi-institutional digital repository; the OmniPoP, a shared large scale fiber network linking the CIC universities to high speed networks across the globe; and the CIC’s investment in InCommon, enabling CIC universities to easily share digital resources inter-institutionally using CIC users’ campus logins and passwords.