BOARD OF DIRECTORS - CHAIRMAN
The Board of Directors (BoD) is the supreme administrative body of GRNET S.A. and decides on all issues related to the management and realization of the company's goals, with the exception of those issues for which the General Assembly is exclusively responsible. The BoD charts the company's strategy and development policy and determines main financing resources for GRNET S.A. At the same time it supervises and manages the company's assets. In addition, it sees to the further development and promotion of the company's national and European character. The Board of Directors consists of eight members who serve for a four-year term. The Chairman is a member of the BoD and the company's chief executive officer. He isthe chief scientific supervisor of GRNET S.A. operations and oversees and directs all services. He also brings before the BoD issues concerning the company's policy.
THE STRATEGY PLANNING COMMITTEE
Consults the Chairman and through him the BoD on issues related to the company's strategy and priorities. At the same time coordinates GRNET's participation in projects. The Strategy Planning Committee consists of seven members including the company's two directors.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE
The Project Management Structure consists of the Technical/Operations Director, the Services and Infrastructure Development Coordinator, the Networking and Computing Infrastructures Coordinator, the Services Coordinator and the Coordinators of the individual operating units (Communication and Public Relations, Legal Support, Human Resources, Financial Management, Quality Assurance).
THE BACKBONE NETWORK EXPERT TEAM (TT)
The backbone network expert team (Technical Team) is appointed by the BoD and includes representatives from universities and research bodies. Its aim is to coordinate actions for the participation of end-users. Representatives of the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, European networks, scientists from Greece and abroad, as well as representatives of Greek companies operating in the field, may participate in the Technical Team. The role of the
Technical Team is purely consultative and contributes to the development of strategic modifications and operational restructuring of GRNET S.A. The main objective of the Technical Team is to provide services, excellent to the highest degree, in order to ultimately integrate the views and requests of end-users into the operation of the company.
THE NETWORK OPERATIONS CENTRE (NOC)
GRNET's technical administration and development is performed by the Network Operations Centre. To be more precise, the Network technical operations of the Network and the necessary promotion and development pilot projects for the new generation Internet have been assigned to network engineers and technicians within GRNET.
GRNET S.A. has already acquired 15 year IRUs for Dark Fiber (DF) links for the largest part of its core and access network. As of today GRNET owns 8950 Km of dark fiber pairs. Alcatel DWDM equipment is installed in our network backbone and in metropolitan area networks in Athens and Salonica. GRNET S.A.’s goal with the planned migration to owned-fiber infrastructure, is to operate a “hybrid” network that will continue to provide sound production-quality IP services to all users and at the same time provide Layer 1/Layer 2 services to its clients.
In 2010, GRNET extended its core and access network by connecting with dark fiber pairs more than 5 clients and upgraded part of it by connecting GRNET power users to 10Gbps. Furthermore, innovative services were designed and deployed by exploiting the existing cloud computing infrastructure. These services include online storage services, virtual machines provision and group collaboration services.
In the upcoming two years, GRNET network will be redesigned and upgraded (GRNET-4) taking into account next generation networking trends and technologies. GRNET-4 will be based on 3 basic service layers: the optical service layer, the carrier service layer and the IP service layer. GRNET data centers will be fully equipped with IT equipment, facilitating the provision of existing services in more users as well as the deployment of new services (SaaS, PaaS cloud IaaS and “Scientific” SaaS services). Towards this direction, an HPC infrastructure and an energy efficient (green) data center is going to be installed, aiming at a low PUE through the exploitation of green technologies and renewable energy sources.
