Executive Voices

Re-engineering Our Economy

MCNC marks 25 years of innovation by looking forward, not back

By Dave Rizzo


AS MCNC celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, our mission to foster technology-based economic development in partnership with businesses, industries, government and educational institutions continues to be essential to the lives of North Carolina residents.

North Carolina’s state government long realized that innovation is the key to prosperity and the state’s long-term economic health. That was true 25 years ago when MCNC was founded as a non-profit organization designed to be a technology-based catalyst for economic development, and it’s true today.

Through the years, MCNC has a rich history of nurturing new ideas through research and development, venture funds and providing the information technology infrastructure — the N.C. Research and Education Network (NCREN), recognized as one of the nation’s finest research and education networks.

When state government asked MCNC to operate independent of direct state annual funding, MCNC launched four companies in four years. One of those companies, Cronos Integrated Microsystems, was launched in 1999 and purchased by JDS Uniphase Corp. for $750 million.

From its share of the proceeds, all MCNC organizations operate independent of direct state financial support. In addition, MCNC donated $30 million to e-NC, a grassroots organization that has successfully extended high-speed Internet access throughout the state, especially in rural areas, and has made significant strides in educating North Carolina residents about technology through digital literacy training programs and public Internet access sites.

The statewide network, NCREN, was developed in 1985 in partnership with North Carolina’s public and private universities. The network provides Internet, video, audio and computing services to approximately 180 locations throughout the state, including the University of North Carolina’s 16-campus system, Duke and Wake Forest universities, and many other education, government and non-profit institutions.

Through NCREN, North Carolina established the nation’s first broadcast-quality, interactive video network for distance learning. Last year, more than 50,000 students and faculty used NCREN’s video network, which delivers more than 100 hours of classes, conferences and seminars each week.

NCREN’s data network started almost a decade before the Internet, as we use it today, was developed. Since 1987, the amount of information traveling over the network has increased more than 25,000 times. Today, NCREN supports half a million users every day.

NCREN was the foundation for computing in North Carolina when MCNC operated the N.C. Supercomputing Center. Now, MCNC, in partnership with universities across the state, is poised to help North Carolina advance its leadership role in technology-led economic development with the development of one of the nation’s first statewide grid computing networks. Built on the NCREN backbone, the N.C. Statewide Grid is the next evolution of the NCREN and computing in North Carolina.

Core to the mission of MCNC and its partners is extending research and development and the innovation and jobs it produces beyond the major metropolitan areas of North Carolina. The statewide grid will help achieve that goal. It is the most ambitious upgrade to our state’s computing and networking infrastructure in more than 15 years — as important to the 21st century economy as roads, airports and bridges.

The major metropolitan areas of our state will continue to play significant economic development roles, but the outer reaches of the state will be enabled to participate and fully benefit from technology-led economic growth like never before through the statewide computing grid.

A grid infrastructure enables computers to work together and share resources in new ways. Multiple computers linked by a grid network operate, and appear to a user, as a single computing system. Resources on a grid include the computers, storage systems, scientific instruments, mobile devices, and software applications — all linked by a network that enables the resources to be shared.

The N.C. Grid will advance science and education to enable us to do things that haven’t been possible before. It will attract new businesses and create new companies and jobs. It will accelerate research and development, enhance collaboration among university researchers, and lower costs through more efficient use and sharing of resources.

The grid will allow new levels of computer-intensive projects to be developed in areas of the state that have historically been underserved. The result will be greater levels of innovation, the creation of more intellectual property and more businesses started with local entrepreneurial leadership.

Last fall, MCNC launched an innovative pilot program in partnership with the Centennial Campus incubator at N.C. State University to provide start-up companies with access to grid computing resources at no cost during a company’s initial phases of development. If successful, MCNC plans to expand the program to other areas of the state.

We believe that grid computing is essential to the re-engineering of our economy. Keys to making grid technology work for all of North Carolina include continued investment in the NCREN backbone infrastructure, the identification and pursuit of research opportunities at each university that are a good fit for local economic development opportunities, and the enlistment of community colleges to design training programs to support the kinds of companies created through research.