Pay-for-use
EGI currently operates within a publicly funded research and academic environment providing services free at the point of delivery with resources bought from grants dedicated to certain groups or disciplines either by direct allocation or by peer review. With the advent of cloud computing, business models and user expectations are shifting towards on-demand and pay-per-use service provision increasing flexibility and agility. This new paradigm provides motivation for EGI to provide new service definitions by enabling the possibility to provide ICT services that can be paid for the use, along with the more traditional procurement of resources to be managed and offered for free to the owners.
This approach also allows researchers and resource providers to better understand costs to access individual services and would enable the creation of innovative business models and pricing schemes (e.g. pay-per-use).
Business Models
EGI provides a number of business models depending on the customer and use case, these can be summarized as:
- B2B: SaaS and/or PaaS providers integrated with EGI providing IaaS
- B2C: Direct consumption of services and support
The EGI Foundation can facilitate 2 separate roles
- Matchmaker: Identifying a single provider who can best support the given use case
- Broker: Represent multiple EGI service providers offering a single point of contact. This model is attractive for use cases that require distributed environments across multiple sites, for resource requests that are unable to be fulfilled by a single provider, and potential for negotiation of pricing packages.
Providers, Services and Prices
The following table provides an overview of the current service providers within EGI who can support pay-for-use models, services and resources offered and pricing.
NGI/RC | GOCDB Name | Contact | Service Type | Services and Resources | Access Policy | Preferred Payment Direct/Indirect | Grid Compute Price [HEPSPEC06/hr] |
Cloud Compute Price [wallclock/hr] |
Grid Storage Price [€/GB/Month] |
Cloud Storage Price [€/GB/Month] |
VAT [%] |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CESGA-IBERGRID | CESGA | Carlos Fernandez Pablo Rey |
Batch + Cloud |
|
Direct |
€0.02/core/HEPSPEC06 hour |
€0.04/core+2GB RAM/hour (+VAT) Example:
|
€0.055/GB/month (+VAT) | €0.055/GB/month (+VAT) | 21% | |
IFCA-IBERGRID | IFCA-LCG2 | Jesus Marco | Batch (SLURM, SGE) + Cloud |
|
Both, Direct preferred |
|
€0.03 | Minimal storage free, requests up to 100 TB high performance storage possible | €0.05 | 21% | |
Institute of Informatics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (II SAS) | IISAS-FedCloud |
Ladislav Hluchý |
Cloud (Openstack) |
|
Both | N/A | €0.06/core/h +VAT | N/A | TBD | 20% | |
Latvian Grid | IMCSUL | Kaspars Krampis | Cloud: OpenStack, GRID: ARC + SLURM |
|
TBC | €0.07/core/hr + VAT | N/A | TBD | N/A | 21% | |
NGI-IT |
INFN-BARI PRISMA-INFN-BARI (cloud) INFN-XX |
Vincenzo Spinoso | EMI, OpenStack |
|
Both | €0.07/hr + VAT | €0.05 + VAT | €0.02 + VAT | €0.02 + VAT | 22% | |
100 Percent IT | 100IT | David Blundell | Cloud (Openstack) |
|
Available to all | Both | N/A | €0.07 + VAT | N/A | TBD | 20% |
PL-Grid | CYFRONET-LCG2 | Mariusz Sterzel | Cloud + Batch via Cream / EMI |
|
Both | €0.03 + VAT | €0.04 + VAT | TBD | TBD | 23% | |
TUBITAK ULAKBIM | TR-10-ULAKBIM | Onur Temizsoylu Feyza Eryol |
Cloud + Batch |
|
Both | €0.04/core/hour + VAT | €0.05/core/hour + VAT | TBD | TBD | 18% | |
UIIP NASB | BY-UIIP | Serge Salamanka | Cloud + Batch |
|
Indirect | $0.077/hr 1 Core | $0.015/hr | $0.055/GB/month | $0.055/GB/month | 20% | |
Fraunhofer SCAI | SCAI | Horst Schwichtenberg | Cloud (Openstack) + Grid (gLite) |
Cloud:
Grid:
|
TBC | €0.02 | TBC | TBD | TBC | 19% | |
CSC, IT Center for Science, Ltd. | CSC-cloud | Janne Ignatius, Luís Alves | Cloud (Openstack) |
|
Direct | N/A | € 0.04 | N/A | TBD | 24% |