RedCLARA as member of the global academic and research networking community, has been working for several years in deploying and implementing services for its communities. The Colaboratorio service is one of the most remarkable advances regarding this work.
The service development started within the scope of the ELCIRA project (co-funded by the European Commission through its Framework Programme 7, e-Infrastructure line) as the main task of its work package 5, devoted to develop a tools and services to enhance collaboration between Europe and Latin America in research activities.
Colaboratorio can be described as an application market focused on the communities, and its implementation can help to bring together communities in different regions. Nowadays, the Colaboratorio offers services like a communities management framework based on Jomsocial, a Webconference system based on MCONF, a Wiki service, the Filesender (developed/funded/supported by the NRENs AARNet, BELNET, HEAnet, SURFnet, and UNINETT), a Videoconference scheduling service called SIVIC, and tools for news, funds notifications, and events management. This effort brings all the created content, and collaboration efforts in a common space provided by the NRENs for the NRENs.
This platform was developed -and it is continously updated- specifically to support the work of research and education communities with a variety of tools that allow academics to share and promote knowledge, organise joint activities and communicate in real time, a secure and private environment, optimising time and effort.
Thanks to the ELCIRA and MAGIC projects, Colaboratorio has evolved into a cloud service that can be incorporated in the websites of the national networks. MAGIC is taking this collaboration platform to other world regions in order to foster and empower global collaboration.