ACONET Association
ACONET is the acronym for the "Association for the Promotion of an Austrian National Research and Education Network (NREN)", founded in 1986 (ZVR number 411302816). The acronym for this Austrian NREN is ACOnet.
ACOnet was originally funded by the Austrian Ministry of Science within the framework of the ACONET Association and was established in 1990 under the responsibility of TU Wien. Since 1992 ACOnet has been operated by the University of Vienna and has been continuously developed in cooperation with its participating organizations. In this process, the board of the ACONET Association acts (under the name "ACOnet Steering Committee") as a user advisory board for the University of Vienna as ACOnet operator.
Board Members
In the term of office 2023-2027, the board of the ACONET Association consists of the following persons:
- Bernd Logar - Chairman
- Michael Redinger (University of Innsbruck) - Deputy Chairman
- Philipp Rammer (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz) - Treasurer
- Thomas Riedrich (FH Joanneum) - Deputy Treasurer
- Christoph Wild (Medical University of Vienna) - Secretary
- Johann Wilfling (University of Klagenfurt) - Deputy Secretary
Secretary General of the ACONET Association is Petra Karlhuber (University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna). Christian Panigl and Harald Michl (both University of Vienna / ACOnet) are co-opted into the board as advisors. Peter Gruber (University of Klagenfurt) and Reinfried O. Peter (Graz University of Technology) serve as auditors.
National and international activities
In addition to its role as a user advisory board, the ACONET Association has taken on several representative functions for Austria's scientific and university community in recent years:
- A consortium of Austrian universities, represented by the ACONET Association, joined the international "Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe" (PRACE) in July 2018. This step opened up new opportunities in the field of supercomputing for Austria's science and research community. However, the resources for High Performance Computing are no longer provided via PRACE, but via EuroHPC. At the request of the research partners, Austria's representation at PRACE was therefore terminated at the end of 2023.
- Since August 2020, the ACONET Association is a shareholder of ACOmarket GmbH. All members of the ACONET Association that belong to the category "Public Clients" can thus obtain services from ACOmarket GmbH without any tender procedure by applying the in-house privilege.
- In February 2021, a consortium under the umbrella of the ACONET Association was able to successfully acquire infrastructure funding from the FFG: As part of the highly innovative "AQUnet" project (Austrian Quantum Fiber Network), an Austria-wide network for the distribution of quantum information and precision signals will be established on the basis of the ACOnet infrastructure.
- In the fall of 2021, the ACONET association assumed both the legal representation of Austria within the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) and the role of "Austrian Mandated Organization" within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) - both at the request of the respective stakeholders and in close coordination with them.
Association membership
All legal entities that participate in the Austrian NREN ACOnet and have signed a corresponding participation agreement can become full members of the ACONET Association.
Further information can be found in the association's statutes (German only):
ACONET Vereinsstatuten 2023.pdf(248 kB)- ACONET Vereinsbeitritt v2.pdf(510 kB)
- ACONET Vereinsnominierung v2.pdf(497 kB)
- ACOnet MoU 201012.pdf Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Vienna and the ACONET Association(103 kB)