The Distributed Systems (DS) group provides the core operational support for the INFN-wide Grid infrastructure and for the Cloud infrastructure currently available only internally at CNAF; additionally, it investigates how to evolve the existing infrastructures to pursue increased resource efficiency in view of the progress in the underlying technologies.
More specifically, the current DS activities cover:

• Coordination of the Italian NGI and operation of central Grid services located at CNAF, as part of the EGI project (Inspire between 2010 and 2014, then Engage until 2018).
• Adaptation of the WNoDeS software to standard Cloud computing frameworks such as OpenStack. WNoDeS itself has been adopted by the Tier-1 for several scientific experiments since 2009.
• Technology transfer in the form of seminars or within initiatives such as the project Marche Cloud (2012- 2014) and Open City Platform (2014 – 2016).
• Provisioning of virtual machines, also from a Cloud infrastructure, for multiple use cases.
• Investigation, together with the Tier-1, on how to better integrate Grid-based and Cloud-based services, so to make for example the use of the data center more efficient and flexible.
• Participation to relevant forums in this field, such as in the context of the INFN Computing and Network Committee.
• Management and development of the INFN Corporate Cloud.
• Testing and development activities for the INDIGO-DataCloud project.
• Development activities for the !CHAOS and EEE projects.