About CLARA

CLARA logo

Cooperación Latino Americana de Redes Avanzadas (CLARA) has two main objectives:

To build a network that interconnects with the advanced networks in Latin America
To create a non-governmental organisation that represents the interests of the organisations connected by this network.

The initial idea for the formation of CLARA was floated in June 2002 at a workshop in Toledo, Spain, organised by CAESAR, a study funded by DG Information Society that led to the current ALICE project.

Following that meeting, the idea of the Latin American networking organisation took shape, and was transformed into the organisation that CLARA is today. CLARA's formal constitution was agreed on 9 June 2003 at a meeting in Mexico. CLARA was registered as an international not-for profit organisation in Uruguay on 23 December 2003.

Today, CLARA has 17 partner NRENs across Latin America. Since 1 January 2005, CLARA's headquarters have been based in Santiago de Chile, where the CLARA Executive Director has his offices. Over time, CLARA is expected to develop into an organisation whose role in Latin American research networking is similar to that of DANTE in European research networking.

Until the end of March 2008 CLARA received its funding from the European Commission through the ALICE project. Since then the countries participating in CLARA have been responsible for the sustainability of the organisation and the regional Latin American infrastructure. Connectivity to Europe and to other world regions has been sustained in 2008 through cost-sharing between the respective partners.

CLARA and ALICE2

ALICE2, due to be launched in the first quarter of 2009, will be managed by its Latin American partners and will be coordinated by CLARA. CLARA will have full commercial responsibility for the activity, while DANTE will provide management and technical support in the overall management of the project and more specifically in the area of connectivity procurement.

ALICE2 will furthermore be partnered by the organisations responsible for four of the European NRENs, namely GARR (Italy), FCCN (Portugal), RedIRIS (Spain) and RENATER (France), acting on behalf of the pan-European GÉANT community.