Background
e-Infrastructures can be defined as networked tools, data and support (resources) that support a community of researchers, broadly including all those who participate in and benefit from research. Specifying future developments in e-Infrastructure requires recognition of the dual value of e-Infrastructure to research communities, both as a resource in its own right and as a means of access to other resources.
Whereas e-Infrastructure is fundamentally distributed geographically, other research infrastructure are inherently located, at one or a few points in geographic space. e-Infrastructure, as well as being research infrastructure in its own right, provides added value to fixed-location research infrastructures. e-Infrastructure can provide many modes of access independently of distance to fixed research infrastructures such as particle accelerators, telescopes, marine research ships etc. which previously could be used in research only at the specific location concerned. It is worth pointing out that there is this location & access dichotomy within e-Infrastructures themselves. Even large databases are inherently located, they involve data stored on specific devices, however, caching, replication and remote management techniques implemented in a grid layer enable these to be used in many ways as if they were local. This can reduce time and effort by researchers in a distributed community enormously.