GrangeNet Showcase—Opening Speech
Canberra, 9 August 2004
Introduction
It is a pleasure to be here and meet with a group of professionals who are dedicated to strengthening Australia's research capabilities in high speed networking and applications.
In just a short time in this portfolio it is becoming clear that there is enormous potential for new technologies to transform the way we live, work and play.
And I am fast learning of the importance of advanced, high-speed networks to Australia's future as an innovative and productive nation.
It is especially important that our leading minds have access to this infrastructure to remain at the forefront of research and development.
To use a crude metaphor, you need to build the sandpit before you can play.
And in this instance the sandpit is made of advanced networks and high performance computing.
It is both an exciting and challenging time for development in this area of research in Australia.
It's exciting because as our technologies advance, so do our opportunities for conducting leading edge research and development.
It's challenging because the pace of technological advancement is such, the bar continues to be raised higher and higher.
The Australian Government is committed to ensuring that our technologies keep pace with the creative minds of our scientists and that the ICT capabilities of Australia continue to develop.
GrangeNet
One of our success stories is of course, GrangeNet.
Funded by the Australian Government's Advanced Networks Program, GrangeNet supports a number of our nation's research communities that depend on a network with high bandwidth and low latency.
GrangeNet underpins a range of exciting areas of research, such as particle physics, nano technology, bioinformatics, linguistics, media services and astronomy.
Through its advanced network, our leading researchers and scientists can remotely access resources such as supercomputers, distributed data sets and state of the art scientific instruments.
It's also a great way to link up leading research institutions and universities across the nation, and across the globe.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of you involved in GrangeNet, and thank you for your achievements to date. Your research gallery is quite amazing and you are making remarkable contributions to scientific advancement.
I would also like to thank the fine work of the GrangeNet consortium, comprising the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet), the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC), the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC), Cisco Systems, and PowerTel.
Government Support
The Australian Government is committed to innovation and has invested significantly in this area.
In May 2004 the Prime Minister announced the $5.3 billion innovation package Backing Australia's Ability - Building our Future through Science and Innovation.
Of this package, $308 million is going to boost innovation in ICT through a range of targeted activities.
For example, we have extended funding for the National ICT Centre of Excellence (NICTA) until 2011. This long term commitment from the Howard Government will help NICTA achieve its goal of being a world-scale and world-class research and training institution. The Government has high hopes for NICTA to build Australia's competitive advantage in ICT.
Further funding has also been provided for the ICT Incubators and the Advanced Networks Programs.
The Incubators Program funds incubators across Australia, which in turn provide start-up ICT companies with development services such as seed capital, business coaching and advice, mentoring and introductions to broader industry and financing networks.
An additional $36 million will extend this program for four years from 2004 to 2008. This brings the total funding to $122 million since 1999.
As you no doubt aware, the Advanced Networks Program (ANP) supports high capacity and experimental networks, such as GrangeNet.
This enables research and development of technologies and applications in areas as diverse as remote surgery and film post-production.
The Advanced Networks Program will receive an additional $21 million to extend its projects for another three years from 2004 to 2007. This brings the Government's total commitment to $60 million since the program began in 1999.
The extra funding will enable the program to take full advantage of existing networks and extend them even further.
It will also give the Advanced Networks a chance to properly explore the commercial opportunities that can come from this sort of research.
This is an important avenue for strengthening both scientific and economic success, and is a smart investment in Australia's future.
Investing in Our Future
Information and communication technologies underpin Australia's development as an information economy. These technologies are central to innovation across most sectors, particularly science.
Access to bandwidth is now a basic requirement for most scientific activities.
Research is becoming increasingly bandwidth hungry and current scientific projects require at least gigabit speed.
Through the use of high speed networks the higher education sector is ensuring it gets the maximum return on its investment in advanced scientific equipment.
Equipment that would have once sat idle for two thirds of a day can now be accessed and utilised around the clock by researchers on the other side of the country or the other side of the world.
It is also fostering a new age of collaborative research.
In Australia, groups such as the Nanostructural Analysis Network Organisation and the Australian Virtual Observatory rely on access to advanced networks.
GrangeNet provides the crucial infrastructure for these organisations to conduct their work.
For example, the Nanostructural Organisation involves linking up state of the art instruments at five universities across Australia - the Universities of Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland, Western Australia, and New South Wales Uni.
These instruments are the only ones of their kind in the southern hemisphere and it is GrangeNet that ensures remote access from other universities within Australia and overseas.
GrangeNet is also crucial for the Australian Virtual Observatory. It permits astrophysicists to analyse observations taken by a number of different instruments at the same time.
There are now more than 100 major optical and radio telescopes around the world, each with a large array of instruments and all of them are increasing generating mountains of scientific data.
Due to the progress we are making in ICT, it will soon be possible to generate more than one terabyte of data every night, from just one telescope.
Researchers at the Australian National University, the CSIRO and the Anglo-Australian Observatory are collaborating across GrangeNet and with colleagues around the world to establish a truly global Virtual Observatory.
This is exciting work that requires the support of powerful infrastructure. And that is what GrangeNet is providing.
To give you an example of its power, a 10 megabit per second network would normally take more than five weeks to download a terabyte of data.
In contrast - using a 10 gigabit per second network like GrangeNet it will take you less than an hour to download the same data - allowing the researcher to begin the process of putting that data to good use sooner.
With modern science now generating terabytes of data, scientists need high performance networks to share this data with their contemporaries and research partners in a timely fashion.
So by funding programs like ANP and GrangeNet, the Australian Government is making sure that our reputation as a leader in ICT continues.
Conclusion
As I have already stated, a key element to this success is making sure that we work together.
It is important for Government that we compare notes, share knowledge, and generate ideas with experts in the field.
While today's event will focus on virtual collaboration - it's still useful to get together in a physical sense to exchange information and discuss ways to advance and this forum presents a valuable opportunity to do just that.
Again, congratulations on your achievements to date and as I continue in this portfolio, I look forward to hearing more about your successful endeavours.
I would now like to officially open the GrangeNet Showcase.
Thank you.