What Roadmap for INAF’s IT Infrastructure?

Abstract: In the recent history of Astrophysics, IT infrastructures for both computing and archiving have become increasingly important for producing excellent scientific results.

The need to manage ever-larger volumes of data reflects the necessity to access sustainable and often centralized medium-to-large scale infrastructures, which are slowly but surely replacing the small and medium-scale infrastructures that have characterized the working methods of INAF researchers until now. INAF’s participation in major global research infrastructures, such as SKA and CTA, and the growing proliferation of national, European, and global initiatives to create shared computing clusters or storage clouds, have further highlighted this need within the scientific community, making it appropriate for the Institute to change its approach to the procurement, management, provision, and coordination of computing and storage resources.

Therefore, it is necessary to reform and update the internal Information Technology (ICT) offerings at INAF to adapt them to the new challenges on the horizon, related to the increasingly significant role of IT in the production, qualification, preservation, and accessibility of observational and theoretical data in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The talk summarizes the work already done by ICT in this area and aims to stimulate discussion, directly involving the community, on the development of INAF’s new e-infra DATA-STAR.