The Project on Middleware for collaborative Applications and Global virtual Communities (MAGIC) started in April 2015 and was funded under the EC Horizon 2020 Program. The project aims at consolidating and completing the building blocks of the middleware necessary for the establishment of a marketplace of services and real-time applications for international and inter-continental research groups.
MAGIC is a global collaboration project with 20 partners representing regional and national research and education networks for Europe, Latin America, Africa, Central Asia, Arab Region, Asia-Pacific and Caribbean regions. The specific objectives of the project are:
· To foster the deployment of the platforms that enable mobility of people and seamless access to services by promoting the establishment of identity federations connected to eduGAIN, creating awareness of privacy and security issues and spreading educational roaming (eduroam).
· To develop a Model for the provision of services between NRENs of participating World Regions based on Cloud Provisioning that takes advantage of applications developed and run by NRENs across different continents to create a model for a worldwide application market for collaboration tools and services.
· To seek consensus among participating World regions on the importance of interoperability of Real Time Applications and work towards the adoption of standards to promote the creation of a worldwide environment for these applications.
· To foster the collaborative work of Global Science Communities by actively promoting the participation of Latin American and other regions’ researchers
The Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN) has been an active partner in MAGIC with a mandate to implement and deploy services in the Arab region. In cooperation with CESNET, (the national research and education network of Czech Republic), GEANT (the regional European R&E network) and RNP (the Brazilian national research and education network), ASREN conducted two workshops on deploying federation of identity infrastructure and implementing eduroam. Federation of identity infrastructures and eduroam has been implemented in several Arab countries including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, UAE, Qatar and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
ASREN has also been one of the main players in developing the Global Science Communities on Biodiversity, e-Health, Environment and remote Instrumentations. A workshop and a session on Global Science Communities was included in ASREN’s Annual Conference e-AGE 2016 in Beirut with participating organizations from Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Malawi and Chile.
The funding of the European Commission is highly acknowledged. It provided means to enable collaboration at the global level with partners from all over the world.
