What are the unique services offered by the Institute that cannot be offered by individual organizations?
The primary advantage of the Institute is one of focus–focus on shared grid-based computing and collaboration services. While the various organizations served by the Institute must on their own address cyberinfrastructure support, grant application writing, and inter-disciplinary/inter-organizational collaboration as three of many tasks required for support their primary missions, the Institute can focus on these tasks as its primary concern. This frees academic and business organizations to focus their resources on their core competencies. The aggregation of systems and services associated with these critical support elements allows for economies of scale, attention to achieving and maintaining collective awareness of ongoing regional activities, and the ability to attract, train, share and retain a critical mass of uniquely skilled support and research staff essential for collaboration and mutual success.
