Open Source Software Powers the Biggest Physics Project in History

Today Progress Software announced that the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN*) is using Progress® FUSE™, to run its operational grid activities of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) re-launch which happened this month. FUSE is an open source product line based on several Apache projects for which IONA (acquired by Progress in June 2008) provided leadership and Progress today continues to be a significant contributor. There are many skeptics that believe open source software isn’t meant for large-scale projects but CERN has proven that wrong. Not only has FUSE will underpin all grid monitoring systems used in CERN’s quest to find the Higgs Boson—known as 'The God Particle', but CERN welcomes the opportunity to contribute back to the open source project and deploy it freely across all their sites.

James Casey, Technical Architect at CERN, sites “We needed to find a partner that could help us bring agility and reliability to our IT infrastructure.” He added, “We have a pipeline of projects that we need to deliver over the coming years, so this first step lays the foundation for change.”

In addition to using FUSE, CERN also deployed Progress® SonicMQ® to form the communications backbone of its Technical Infrastructure Monitoring (TIM) system, designed to alert researchers in the event of an emergency. The use of open and “closed” source software creates a true open integration environment that re-enforces the fact that every organization has the power to choose the solutions that best fit their integrated infrastructure requirements.