VObs.it, member of IVOA and Euro-VO, is the Italian contribution to the International Virtual Observatory collaboration.

From 2003 to 2005, the participation of Italy in VO activities has been delegated to DRACO (Italian Datagrid for Research in Astrophysics and Coordination with the virtual Observatory), a Grid project having the aim of proving the feasibility of implementing a distributed multi-functional environment allowing the use of specialized (observational, computing, storage) Grid nodes.

After the Euro-VO MoU was signed in October 2005, a separate VO project (VObs.it) was established and funded by INAF. The aim of the project is to coordinate within a unified approach the archives and databases developed by the Italian community. The first steps in this direction are to foster the adoption of IVOA standards, to provide Grid-aware VO applications and to build a national registry containing the list of VO-compliant services available to the international community.

VObs.it is coordinated by the Information Systems Unit (SI) of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).

Participation of CINECA in VObs.it falls within the INAF-CINECA 2005-2007 agreement.

Participation of ASDC has been recommended by the relevant Joint ASI-INAF Committee; a working agreement has been reached with ASDC, and formalisation of the collaboration with ASI is being finalised.