The IT department of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) has announced a notable change in its approach to supporting scientific workflows. Rather than maintaining its own LaTeX infrastructure, the IT will now direct researchers to services available through the Helmholtz Cloud.
Managing IT services in a scientific institute is an ongoing challenge. “It’s not just a matter of setting up servers and installing software once,” explains Ants Finke, head of IT at HZB. “Services and servers require constant updates, maintenance, and support by the help desk. With the wide range of application expected, IT teams need both breadth and depth of expertise to keep everything running smoothly.”
This challenge is on of the inspiring benefits of the Helmholtz Cloud. The platform enables the 18 Helmholtz Centers to collaborate by sharing selected services across the network, eliminating redundancies and fostering efficiency.
For years, LaTeX has been a cornerstone of scientific writing, providing researchers with the tools to create high-quality documents for publications and presentations. “We decided to meet the demand for LaTeX through two services available on the Helmholtz Cloud,” says Finke. “One is Collabtex, offered by HZDR, which is based on Overleaf, a modern online platform for LaTeX. The other is SciFlow, another online tool designed for editing and collaborating on scientific publications.” Interestingly, SciFlow itself is a service provided by HZB to other Helmholtz Centers, making the collaboration reciprocal.
This decision means that HZB will no longer operate its own LaTeX service. The move reflects a broader trend toward shared infrastructure in scientific organizations, enabling IT departments to focus on supporting cutting-edge research rather than duplicating efforts on common services. By adopting this model, HZB is not only optimizing its resources but also reinforcing the collaborative mission that underpins the Helmholtz Association.
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