SLING is open to academic and scientific research partners (research institutes, centres, universities, industrial research centres), education partners (schools, learning centres) and industry partners.
The national grid computing infrastructure has primarily an integration function – its purpose is not to provide the computing, data and network resources to the partners that need them, but to provide access to the computing, data and network resources of the partners to the users of the grid, and to ensure the interconnection between the national and the European infrastructures, and thus access to foreign resources. The computing, data and network resources in the grid are therefore resources that are made available for shared use by partners under use agreements and controlled by virtual organisation mechanisms.
SLING partners
By joining SLING, partners express their interest in participating in the Slovenian national grid infrastructure. The partners may have different purposes: they may work together as researchers or developers in the field of grid technology, or as users of technology and infrastructure for an activity in their specific discipline.
The level of cooperation also varies: partners can participate as associate partners, monitoring the development of the technology through the organisational infrastructure or testing the suitability of the technology for their discipline through the testing infrastructure, or as full partners, participating in the Slovenian grid infrastructure by making available their own capacity in the form of computational, data and network capacity, and by contributing to the maintenance of the common infrastructure through expertise, human resources, and the maintenance of the core services.
Additional obligations are governed by mutual agreements and contractual relationships, with SLING assisting them with infrastructure, support and arbitration.
Individual researchers are users of the infrastructure and are not directly involved in the national initiative. Under the Grid Infrastructure Usage Scheme, they manage their access through virtual organisations, assisted by their parent organisations (which are typically SLING partners) and directly by the national initiative to join the virtual organisations.
