The research and education community increasingly relies on a comprehensive suite of advanced information technologies—including networking, computation, visualization, and collaboration tools—to accomplish its work. The term "cyberinfrastructure" encompasses all of these, as well as the extensive ecology of skills and other resources needed to develop, deploy, use, and support them. As the National Science Foundation’s Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure’s 2003 report articulated, “Cyberinfrastructure integrates hardware for computing, data and networks, digitally-enabled sensors, observatories and experimental facilities, and an interoperable suite of software and middleware services and tools.”
The Internet2 community is challenged with developing and implementing strategies that enable their campuses to become woven into this global tapestry of resources. To enable this, the Internet2 community continues to support an integrated, systems approach to cyberinfrastructure that enhances inter-organizational collaboration through:
- Deploying shared services
- Fostering common approaches
- Providing collaboration and training opportunities, and
- Developing tools and software to support cyberinfrastructure deployed by the Internet2 community.
In addition to working with its members, Internet2 fosters the development of technologies that support cyberinfrastructure with its partner organizations in the United States and its counterparts around the world.