Europe's supercomputers are open for business - will it help to streamline innovation and business growth?

A pan-European multi-petaflop-scale supercomputing initiative, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE), was officially opened for business this month.

The Commission has stumped up €70m towards PRACE. The supercomputer initiative's aim of promoting European R&D fits closely with the Commission's Digital Agenda for Europe, a key part of the Europe 2020 strategy which seeks to extract the EU from the more of financial crisis by making the EU more competitive in highly skilled areas such as technology.

It is expected the first research projects to use the supercomputing capabilities will run in August. Any researchers submit their projects for approval by PRACE.

The potential benefits of hosted computing (cloud computing) for companies and researchers are immense, as said CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer. It will allow to speed up the rate of scientific innovation" that can help solve climate change issues before that happens, he said. Researchers might be better able to run experiments quickly and analyze more data if they are able to access public cloud services, he said.

The hosted computing model creates new possibilities for businesses too. "I think we are seeing and will continue to see where there are literally new software investments that create new business models, new opportunities to start and form businesses because of this commercial software infrastructure that's never existed before," he said.

However, is there any rules or criteria for an access to such supercomputers, or how about price? will it be affordable for small scientist groups and businesses.