VT EGI Pay-for-Use PoC

This page is dedicated to the EGI Pay-for-Use Pilot Group and Activities.

Overview

Motivation

Sustainability has been an issue explored by EGI in various ways over the last couple years. There are also messages from the European Commission that keeping the status quo is not an option for e-Infrastructures and EGI should therefore explore options around a more market driven e-Infrastructure for supporting the ERA. However, EGI operates within a publicly funded research and academic environment providing services free at 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 another motivation for EGI to explore 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.

Mandate

This Pilot Group was set up following an exploratory report approved by the EGI Council for how pay-for-use models for EGI resources could be implemented alongside existing procedures where users are billed for the usage of resources. The mandate of the group is to create a proof of concept pay-for-use prototype.

Objectives

The objectives are the group are to:

1. Gather both resource providers and user communities as active participants.
2. Define how resources will be metered and accounted for through the Accounting Portal.
3. Perform a gap analysis of customer, consumer, broker and resource provider supporting services (either new or extensions to the current tools) that would enable the increased automation of the process once it has been manually established and subsequent development required for missing functionality.
4. Evaluate legal, policy, and organisational issues around the full implementation of the pay-for-use model.
5. Introduce a billing function.
6. Submit a final report covering the overall activities and final output for EGI Management.

Group Members

• Sergio Andreozzi, EGI.eu
• Emanouil Atanassov, IICT-BAS
• Bruce Becker, CSIR
• Wilhelm Buehler, KIT-G
• Isabel Campos, CSIC
• Daniele Cesini, INFN-CNAF
• Alessandro Costantini, INFN/Master-Up
• Feyza Eryol, TUBITAK ULAKBIM
• Carlos Fernandez Sanchez, CESGA
• Tiziana Ferrari, EGI.eu
• Luciano Gaido, INFN
• André Gemünd, Fraunhofer SCAI
• John Gordon, STFC
• Todor Gurov, IICT-BAS
• Sigve Haug, ETH ZURICH
• Helmut Heller, BADW
• Ladislav Hluchý, IISAS
• Sy Holsinger, EGI.eu
• Kostas Koumantaros, GRNET
• Kaspars Krampis, IMCS UL
• Antonio Lagana, UNIPG/Master-Up
• Panos Louridas, GRNET
• Giorgio Maggi, INFN-Bari
• Jesus Marco, IFCA/CSIC
• Stuart, Pullinger, STFC
• Serge Salamanka, UIIP NASB
• Diego Scardaci, INFN
• Alvaro Simon, CESGA
• Vincenzo Spinoso, INFN-Bari
• Mariusz Sterzel, CYFRONET
• Achim Streit, KIT-G
• Jelena Tamulienė, VU
• Onur Temizsoylu, TUBITAK ULAKBIM

Technical Details

Technical details to be included

How to Join

If you would like to participate in the Pilot Group, contact policy@egi.eu

References

• EGI Pay-for-Use Exploratory Report for the EGI Council - https://documents.egi.eu/document/1391
• Pay-for-Use Survey Summary - https://documents.egi.eu/document/1391
• Pay-for-Use Presentation at Evolving EGI workshop: http://indico.egi.eu/indico/contributionDisplay.py?sessionId=3&contribId=9&confId=1252
• JRA1 Recommendations in D2.7 Sustainability Plan - https://documents.egi.eu/document/313
• EGI Federated Cloud Task Force - https://wiki.egi.eu/wiki/Fedcloud-tf:FederatedCloudsTaskForce
• EGI Accounting Portal - http://accounting.egi.eu/egi.php