The goal of this session is to give the audience an overview of the basic skills needed to initiate, execute and analyse the results of simple cost assessment exercises. The session covers the key aspects of the different cost assessment methodologies and their optimal application areas. The end of the session has been reserved for a tutorial on how e-FISCAL costing model works in practice as well as on basic cost considerations related to cloud adoption.
Over the past two years, the e-FISCAL project has been assessing the overall cost of computing service provision for research in Europe. This session of the final project workshop will present the key findings of the project including a state of the art review, cost models and analysis, and results on benchmarking EGI and mid-sized HPC installations with the comparable services available from Amazon EC2. Participants will gain a better understanding of the kind of cost assessment issues for high-utilisation rate ICT services that should be considered when choosing between different infrastructure options.
An important aspect of the work carried out by e-FISCAL will be the application of the results. The case studies presented will offer participants concrete examples on how the outputs of e-FISCAL can be applied across the e-Infrastructure community and commercially.
The final session of the e-FISCAL workshop focuses on moving towards the future beyond the project, which finishes at the end of January 2013. Participants will hear different future scenarios from various e-Infrastructure providers as well as industry. This session also serves as a bridge to the EGI dedicated sessions by focusing on specific interests of the e-Infrastructure community.
Due to potential changes in future funding models, a thought experiment around adding pay-for-use models for EGI services that compliments current usage models was endorsed by the EGI Council. This session will cover their recommendations regarding this issue and the different roles, models and plans that are proposed for how such models could be applied within EGI. This includes a short-term experiment for NGIs to participate that would feed into longer-term initiatives. This session also provides and opportunity to discuss the supporting services that should be put in place by EGI.eu, NGIs and resource centres in order to implement the pay-for-use model.
Objectives:
• Present the EGI Pay-for-Use Model
• Discuss the model and agreement on the processes
• Identify participants of the proposed experiment
The EGI Council has adopted a policy to explore how Excellent European Science can be supported through a European level review and resource allocation process of pooled NGI resources. This session will expand on the initial discussion moving forward to an implementation roadmap.
Objectives:
• Present the objectives of this experimental activities
• Present the role, responsibilities, composition and operating arrangements of the Scientific Review Committee that will evaluate resource allocation requests from researchers
• Outline the requirements from user communities and resource providers and various resource provisioning models
• Discuss potential issues to processes
This session covers policy changes resulting from EGI Virtual Team project regarding how scientific publications will be tracked through customised OpenAIRE services for a more accurate demonstration of the scientific impact of EGI. Changes will also be made to how scientific disciplines are classified and used throughout EGI, which will be presented through a newly formed Virtual Team.
Objectives:
• Describe the new policies, processes and tools to improve the tracking of scientific publications possible thanks to EGI and scientific impact assessment
• Present the collaboration with the OpenAIRE project
• Present the results of the new Virtual Team on the scientific discipline classification
• Discuss potential issues to processes
EGI.eu has started work on defining its service portfolio according to standard IT practices with support from the FedSM project. This session offers a first outline of how these services have been defined and structured. A presentation covering an NGI service portfolio for both NGI international tasks (support services) and user-facing services (e.g., batch processing, storage) will help shape discussions on service evolution and connection to funding.
Objective:
• Present and review the defined EGI/NGI service portfolio for user-facing and support services (based on the refactoring of the EGI-InSPIRE Global and NGI international tasks)
Over the first two years of EGI-InSPIRE, a cost analysis has evolved, which started with EGI Global services, breaking down costs between operations, maintenance and development. These figures were presented at the 2nd EC Review and need to be further refined. This session provides an opportunity to present the current status of this activity and discuss the service evolution beyond EGI-InSPIRE. Initial work towards mapping these services between EC and Community funding sources will be presented as a basis for afternoon discussions.
Objectives:
• Understand service evolution after the end of EGI-InSPIRE.
The afternoon session will focus on revising the priority and criticality for funding of EGI services through breakout sessions based on an initial assessment from EGI.eu.
Over the first two years of EGI-InSPIRE, a cost analysis has evolved, which started with EGI Global services, breaking down costs between operations, maintenance and development. These figures were presented at the 2nd EC Review and need to be further refined. This session provides an opportunity to present the current status of this activity and discuss the service evolution beyond EGI-InSPIRE. Initial work towards mapping these services between EC and Community funding sources will be presented as a basis for afternoon discussions.
Objectives:
• Understand service evolution after the end of EGI-InSPIRE.
The afternoon session will focus on revising the priority and criticality for funding of EGI services through breakout sessions based on an initial assessment from EGI.eu.
The final afternoon session will close the workshop by presenting the results of the breakout sessions, summarising the morning sessions and list a set of actions moving forward.