Have been looking into what a Virtual Research Environment is.

JISC has a programme which aims to:

• building and deploying VREs based on currently available tools and frameworks
• assessing their benefits and shortcomings in supporting the research process
• improving and extending them to meet the future needs of UK research
• developing or integrating new tools and frameworks where appropriate solutions do not yet exist

Two videos from JISC (WMV format) provide a useful and quick overview from a research point of view and then the technical solutions.