D2.3 First Sustainability Plan

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Project Acronym

Fed4FIRE

Project Title

Federation for FIRE

Instrument

Large scale integrating project (IP)

Call identifier

FP7-‐ICT-‐2011-‐8

Project number

318389

Project website

www.fed4fire.eu

D2.3 – First Sustainability Plan

Work package

WP2

Task

T2.3

Due date

31/07/2013

Submission date

31/07/2013

Deliverable lead

Jan Van Ooteghem (iMinds)

Version

1.0

Authors

Jan Van Ooteghem (iMinds)

Bram Naudts (iMinds)

Wim Vandenberghe (iMinds)

Brecht Vermeulen (iMinds)

Stefan Bouckaert (iMinds)

Steve Taylor (IT Innovation)

Paul Grace (IT Innovation)

Felicia Lobillo (ATOS)

Josep Martrat (ATOS)

Luis Muñoz (UC)

Pablo Sotres (UC)

Mark Sawyer (EPCC)

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Reviewers

Dai Davies (DANTE)

Kostas Kavoussanakis (EPCC)

Abstract

This document provides an initial definition of federation and

sustainability, stakeholder analysis, potential services offered

by the federation, a first proposal of business scenarios and

finally a checklist for analysing the viability of the proposed

scenarios.

Keywords

Sustainability, federation, methodology, stakeholders,

services, business scenarios, evaluation checklist

Nature of the deliverable

R

Report

X

P

Prototype

D

Demonstrator

O

Other

Dissemination level

PU Public

X

PP Restricted to other programme participants

(including the Commission)

RE Restricted to a group specified by the

consortium (including the Commission)

CO Confidential, only for members of the

consortium (including the Commission)

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Disclaimer

The information, documentation and figures available in this deliverable, is written by the

Fed4FIRE

(Federation for FIRE)

– project consortium under EC co-‐financing contract FP7-‐ICT-‐

318389 and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. The

European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information

contained herein.

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Executive Summary

We define of a future federation of testbed facilities as “a collection of multiple independent testbeds that can be coordinated in different ways for the creation of rich, multi-‐functional environments for testing and experimentation; and has clear benefits for its main stakeholders -‐ experimenters, and facility providers.”

The Fed4FIRE project is currently bringing together the knowledge and competences of different stakeholders within the FIRE scene to collaborate and set up a federated platform of facilities, mostly focused on a technical and operational solution. One of the most important issues today is the sustainability of ICT research infrastructures after research projects end. Many projects struggle with this issue, as we have seen in different FIRE initiatives.

Within this task we investigate how this federation should be set up, and kept up and running after the Fed4FIRE project finishes, then when the funding from the EC ends. A complex value network of different types of stakeholders must be managed. The big challenge is search the value for and to incorporate the interests of all stakeholders in order to make sure they clearly benefit from this federation. Examples are knowledge gains, increased usage of the individual facility infrastructures, improved service delivery to the experimenters, economies of scale, etc.

Within this deliverable we have presented our methodology to be used in the remainder of the sustainability task within the Fed4FIRE project. First we have presented a definition for “federation” and “sustainability”. This work was supported by a thorough literature review. Next we have shown the Fed4FIRE landscape with current and potential future stakeholders, where we consider the federator, the experimenters and facility providers to be the main stakeholders. Others such as end users, funding bodies and policy makers, software developers and suppliers of infrastructure and services, and research initiatives also play an important role and will affect the value network. The potential services to be offered to experimenters and the facilities by the federation are listed and an indication of the cost model methodology is shown. Starting from the value proposition, five business scenarios have been defined, ranging from the “Invisible Coordination” up to the “Integrator” scenario. In order to analyse the scenarios in a structured way, we have created an evaluation checklist. The final goal is to present a business plan for the future federation, by evaluating the proposed business scenarios and indicating the most realistic strategy.

This methodology is thus the first presentation of our work and will be applied and refined in the upcoming months and next deliverables.

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Acronyms and Abbreviations

CSA Coordination and Support Actions

EC European Commission

EGI European Grid Initiative

EU European Union

FFA Fed4FIRE Federation Authority

FI-‐PPP Future Internet Public-‐Private Partnership FIRE Future Internet Research and Experimentation FP 7 The Seventh Framework Programme (2007 – 2013) ICT Information and Communication Technology IMS IP Multimedia Subsystem

IP Integrated Project

IPR Intellectual Property Rights OLA Operational Level Agreement SLA Service Level Agreement SME Small and Medium Enterprises STREP Specific Targeted REsearch Projects

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The purpose of the Fed4FIRE project is bringing together the knowledge and competences of different stakeholders within the FIRE scene to collaborate and set up a federated platform for testbed facilities. This can bring a lot of opportunities to all the stakeholders such as knowledge gains, increased usage of the facility infrastructure of the facilities, improved service delivery to the experimenters, economies of scale, etc.

Sustainability of ICT research infrastructures in general and FIRE facilities in particular has been a major concern for many years. The difficult part is to keep the federation up and running after the project, when the funding from the EC ends and each stakeholder must decide whether the concept of a federation is worthwhile to sustain. Different stakeholders such as experimenters, facility providers (either individually or represented throughout other federations), entities supporting the previous stakeholders with infrastructure and software, funding bodies and regulatory instances, and other research projects have their own demands and individual plans for the future. The big challenge is to incorporate the interests of all stakeholders in order to make sure that every stakeholder has a clear benefit.

A strong value proposition with clear indication of the benefits for all stakeholders must be the fundamental idea to start from. This can be seen in Figure 1, as the central component of the business scenario. How will the federation position itself towards its stakeholders: what will be the offer (services) and how will it contribute to the expectations and demands of the facilities and experimenters?

Figure 1: Components within the sustainability task of the Fed4FIRE project

The next step is making the value proposition sustainable in the long run on different levels. On a technical level, the services offered should be state of the art, kept up to date, be reliable and manageable. A solid governance structure should be set up to manage responsibilities, deal with facilities joining and leaving, service level agreements (SLA), running actual operations, etc. This

Governance Technical Economic Operational Value proposition Federation Facilities Experimenters

Business scenarios

Other federation initiatives Other stakeholders

Reality

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includes day-‐to-‐day operational functionality, such as dealing with first level support, maintaining and upgrading services and central infrastructure. Finally the economic picture must fit (costs for running the operational activities within the federation should be covered, either by contributions in kind, revenues or funding mechanisms). These activities must be in place in order to support the value proposition in the long run.

The value proposition will impact the stakeholders. The main stakeholders considered are the facilities, which are the basis of the federation, as well as the stakeholders, the “consumers” of the services. Besides, other stakeholders such as end users, suppliers of software and hardware, and policy & funding bodies, and research initiatives will be impacting or being impacted by the federation. A clear understanding of the relations and impact must be investigated.

Different business scenarios will be proposed and evaluated, ranging from very conservative to fully integrated approaches in terms of service offering. This of course will have an effect on the different levels. More services will complicate the governing structure and technical and operational activities, as well as impact the economic feasibility. Each scenario will be objectively evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively, based upon a predefined checklist of criteria, A reality check will be executed as different projects are currently doing the same exercise, and we can learn from their experiences. As it is not required to define the best scenario, we will consider evolution options over time to move between scenarios.

At the end of the project we will present a business plan for the future federation, by evaluating the proposed business scenarios and indicating the most realistic strategy.

1.1

Purpose and structure of this deliverable

Within this deliverable entitled “First sustainability plan”, we focus on the methodology and different steps required to present our final business plan at the end of the project.

We start with a literature review, listing documents and other information on sustainability within federations that could be relevant for the reality check. Based upon this, we present in section 0 our high level definition of a federation and our view on sustainability. In section 3 we list the different stakeholders for the future federation, including their (possible) roles within the federation, and potential benefits. Section 4 presents the potential services offered by the federation. This is an initial list based upon the current activities in the project and ideas on future services. A methodology is included on how to quantify the costs for keeping the service up and running, and up-‐to-‐date after the project, for the federation as well as for the facilities. In section 5 we present five potential business scenarios ranging from a very conservative to a fully integrated approach in terms of service offering, starting from the value proposition and interaction with the stakeholders. To analyse the business cases in a common way we have listed in section 6 a set of evaluation criteria for business cases. These help us to present the final business plan for the federation taking into account the reality check and potential migration paths of the business cases. Finally we present our first conclusions and next steps.

This is the first deliverable of this task. This methodology will be refined and applied in the upcoming months and is thus the first presentation of our work. The FIRE landscape is a vast, complex and dynamic environment therefore we realize that this is a first attempt to capture the essence of sustainability in the context of a federation model after Fed4FIRE. As we continue to learn and gather new insights and results from other FIRE projects, our work plan can be altered to react to these changes and opportunities.

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1.2

Contribution to the project objective

The major goal of this task is to understand the sustainability requirements, build the business scenarios and identify technical constraints to obtain a sustainable federated Future Internet experimentation facility in Europe. Different subtasks are envisaged.

Clear understanding of what sustainability means

Today different views exist on the term “sustainability”. Within this task 2.3 will study the different aspects of sustainability, based on inputs from the different stakeholders and common practices in other areas of ICT research infrastructures. Also, the work performed in other FIRE projects will be taken into account and links will be established with the CSA project of FP7 Call 8. This subtask will contribute input to Task 8.3 “Sustainable standardization”.

Business models

Business models will be developed that are adapted to specific cases and scenarios, depending on the type of facility and legal entity of the facility provider (e.g., research institute, university, company). As part of this, it will be necessary to build a cost model for the federation, by identifying and quantifying all costs involved in setting up, maintaining, developing and managing the different facilities that are part of the federation. It will be challenging to understand the balance between national or regional funding, EC funding and industry funding. This will also strongly depend on the specifics of the experimentation facilities, the experimenter communities and the maturity of the technologies investigated. An important task to take into account is how to deal with the ability of (FIRE) facilities to join and leave the federation in a fluid way. Results of this subtask will contribute to Task 8.2 “Establish and operate federation authority”.

Input to the architecture

Input will be provided to the architecture task (Task 2.1) in order to take into account technical constraints that are derived from sustainability requirements. Examples are the requirement to have an open architecture that is capable of supporting different experimenter communities (both academic and industrial), which is able to reuse existing components, allows easy adaptation and enhancing of existing infrastructures, provides building blocks for new research infrastructures, allows easy access to the facilities for the experimenters, provides support for facility management by the facility owners, etc.

1.3

Literature

Table 1 shows an overview of the literature analysed, most on projects or initiatives that have the same challenges concerning sustainability within a federations. This is an important exercise, which relates to the reality check of the different business scenarios. A more detailed analysis can be found in Appendix A.

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Table 1: Literature overview Projects /

initiatives

Sustainability tasks Status Ref

Cross-‐disciplinary projects and initiatives (indirectly related to FIRE)

OSIRIS This EU FP7 project (Open and Sustainable ICT Research Infrastructure Strategy) has identified a list of components of sustainability for setting up new ICT research infrastructures.

The list of components has been as a start to structure this deliverable and an input to the checklist for the different business scenarios in Section 6.

Finished [1]

EGI The European Grid Initiative (EGI) has developed an updated taxonomy of services and a first outline of potential business models relevant to EGI serving as a basis for future discussion and exploration. The ecosystem analysis in D2.7 of the EGI project has been used as a start point for identification of the federation stakeholders in Section 3. The same deliverable provided useful input for the initial identification of a number of services that could be offered by the federation to support usage-‐based business models in Section 4.

Ongoing [2]

FedSM FedSM is investigating service management in federated e-‐ Infrastructures and cloud computing facilities.

The FedSM project provides several federation models. These federation models have been used as starting point for our analysis of federation business scenarios in Section 5.

Ongoing [3]

FIRE Coordination and Support Actions

MyFIRE The MyFIRE Support Action gathers best practices for experimental facilities. D4.2 provides an overview of FIRE projects in Europe and the BRIC countries and an analysis of gaps in FIRE provision. Sustainability is stated as the weakest link of all testbeds in the European research framework. The recommendations on sustainability and business models have been taken into account throughout this document. An example is the definition of services and the cost accounting model of Section 4.

Finished [4] [5]

FIRESTATION The FIRESTATION Support Action has developed a FIRE Roadmap. The roadmap addresses lifecyle management, sustainability and services. In the FIRE Roadmap, the components of the OSIRIS framework are used to sketch a first sustainability plan for a federation of FIRE testbeds.

Finished [6]

AmpliFIRE The AmpliFIRE Support Action is developing a first document to sketch the road along which FIRE can evolve into 2020, and the activities in the surrounding environment that make this evolution possible. D1.1 assesses the sustainability plans of different experimentation facilities by using the business model concept proposed by Osterwalder and Picquer. This work can be used in the future to align the sustainability plan of the federation with those of individual experimentation facilities.

Ongoing [7]

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FIRE (Sub)federations & projects

TEFIS TEstbed for Future Internet Services (TEFIS) supports Future Internet of Services Research by offering a single access point to different experimental facilities for communities of software and business developers.

The exploitation strategy is based on individual partner exploitation plans and joint exploitation of TEFIS by an informal partner network established early 2013. The revenue model of TEFIS is based on (EC funded) R&D projects that use TEFIS as a testbed.

Finished [8]

BonFIRE The BonFIRE consortium brings together industrial and academic organisations in cloud computing to deliver a robust, reliable and sustainable facility for large scale experimentally-‐driven cloud research. The project has created their own sustainability plan with special attention for the estimation of the real cost of experimentation. We follow this approach in Section 4.

Ongoing [9]

OpenLab The OpenLab project aims to develop, manage and use a federation of facilities, including several OneLab testbeds, for the purpose of experimentation and education in the field of communication networks for computer systems. The results of this project are highly related to FED4FIRE and informal contacts have been established to exchange information.

Ongoing [10]

OneLab / PlanetLab

The OneLab initiative develops testbeds for the Future Internet. It offers a range of services to testbed users and owners, including an open federation of testbeds which supports network research for the Future Internet. OneLab is also developing strong international partnerships, exploring and experimenting with the concept of ‘federation', initally between testbeds based on the PlanetLab model.

Ongoing [11]

XiFi The XIFI Integrating Project aims to support advanced experiments on the FI-‐PPP core platform in order to leverage existing public investments in advanced infrastructures.

Ongoing [12]

SmartSantander SmartSantander is focused on providing a Smart City laboratory for testing all types of Smart City solutions, ranging from the use of sensors and their networking technologies to the use of service platforms for collecting sensor information and deploying services. Under the scope of SmartSantander project, two documents regarding sustainability issues have been generated in two internal (to the project) deliverables.

Ongoing [13] [14]

OFELIA OFELIA is a large FIRE Project whose main objective is to provide an experimental facility to test network architectures and solutions. It is based on the use of Open Flow over a number of programmable switches. The present exploitation plans in OFELIA can be considered as preliminary with a focus on providing research and continued academic activity.

Ongoing [7]

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2

Our view on federation and sustainability

This section deals with the definition of “federation” and “sustainability”. It is important that there is a clear understanding of both terms. It will impact the remainder of the work within this task.

2.1

What is federation?

We have defined a federation as follows:

“A federation of testbed facilities is a collection of multiple independent testbeds that can be coordinated in different ways for the creation of rich, multi-‐functional environments for testing and experimentation; and has clear benefits for its main stakeholders -‐ experimenters, and facility providers.”

The operation of the federation and the tasks and roles of the stakeholders within it may vary depending on the situation and the aims of the participants involved. A number of example business federation scenarios are furthermore worked out in section 5.

2.2

What is sustainability?

Sustainability, at its most basic definition, is the ability to continue. For example, if a business wishes to continue, it must generate enough revenue to cover its operating costs.

Before we can decide how to proceed after the Fed4FIRE project, we must first determine what we wish to sustain. What are the key elements of Fed4FIRE that we wish to continue beyond the end of the project? There are two major aspects to the answer to this question, as follows.

1. We must have federation stakeholders – if there are none, we have no federation!

We must identify who the main (potential) stakeholders are: the actual organisations or people who may want to participate and the roles they could play within the federation, and the “customers”. In general, the two main stakeholders defined are the facility providers and experimenters. This is discussed further in section 3.

We must present a clear value proposition in order to attract them and keep them interested in participating in the federation and using the services offered. In order to do this, there must be clear benefits for them.

2. We must enable the federation to operate – facilities and experimenters must be able to work with one another.

It is likely that enabling the federation will involve the provision of some support services and infrastructure. The degree of support will depend on the value proposition of the federation, and will differ depending on the business scenario.

A clear governance structure must be formed in order to sustain the federation in the long run and responsibilities should be clear. Besides sustainability should be guaranteed on technical, economic and operational level, as was depicted in the introduction.

2.2.1 The value proposition

The key factor is how we can generate income and economics indicates that, in order to generate revenue, an entity must generate value – i.e. it must provide goods or services its target users find useful or attractive, and so they will be prepared to pay for them, and thus cover the supplier’s costs.

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In a commercial world, the users will be prepared to pay for these goods and services, but other funding patterns may be applicable for the future federation, for example national or EC grant-‐based funding. The major difference between commercial and grant-‐based funding is that grant-‐based funding separates the paymaster from the user. Both types can however co-‐exist next to each other. In both the commercial and public funded cases, the key question of generating and demonstrating value still applies -‐ there must be a clear benefit to the users and the paymaster in keeping the operation alive.

Value is often described in terms of benefits to the stakeholders. Sometimes, the benefits are concrete, and some other times these benefits are abstract. For example a supermarket’s benefit is clear: to supply groceries to its customers, at a place local to them and at reasonable cost. A research program may have more abstract benefits – to encourage research in order to advance human knowledge. Because research outcomes are not known in advance, there is less guarantee of success but, because of a historical track record of human advancement over many centuries has shown that humanity is better off through academic research, it continues to be funded.

The question of generating value should be encapsulated in the value proposition of the federation. In this project, the sustainability work is responsible for determining the initial value proposition of a future federation, and the way it should operate in order to provide this value. The facilities themselves already deliver value to the experimenters, in that they provide infrastructures to enable specialized testing. We need to determine what value the federation provides on top of this, to both the experimenters and the facilities. The actual value depends on the nature of the business scenario of a federation. Different business scenarios are presented in section 5. Before this, the main stakeholders are defined, in section 3 and potential services offered in section 4.

2.2.2 Operating the federation

In order to provide the value proposed, an operational plan considering technical, economic and governance aspects should be created answering the following questions. What organisational structure would fit best? Which services will be offered by the federation, and what impact does the federation have on the participating facilities? How do we deal with future technical evolutions? Who is responsible for which tasks? How will this all benefit the stakeholders?

Continued, sustained operation requires effort (e.g. work from people, maintenance of resources), and this will require the covering of costs to fund the effort. In order to ensure that costs are covered, we need to determine:

• What factors influence our costs

• The total operating costs of the operation we wish to sustain, and

• How we can generate income or find other funding mechanisms to cover these costs

An organisation will have to be set up establishing the viability of the federation after the end of the project. This organisation will provide a focus for the sustainability activity on the activities to be sustained in the latter years of the project, and thereafter. The task on “establishment and operation of the federation authority” will deal with these matters in more detail, based upon input from our sustainability work.

2.2.3 Sustainability plans of the individual facilities

Within different FIRE projects, and also by individual facility providers, sustainability discussions and plans have been made or are in the process of being developed. At present, the sustainability work in Fed4FIRE and the future federation is progressing independently of the sustainability plans of the individual facilities that are part of the Fed4FIRE project and the services they provide. However, we

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have seen from the literature study that several commonalities within these plans exist. As mentioned above, we must make sure that facilities as well as experimenters are attracted to join and make use of the future federation. In order to do so, we must present enough benefits for the stakeholders (experimenters and facilities first) to make sure that the federation has an opportunity to fit within their individual sustainability plans.

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3

Federation stakeholders

Before defining the business scenarios and analysing their value networks, the exercise of identifying the stakeholders involved and their relationships is required. Within this project, we define a stakeholder as any entity whose activity is currently or potentially related to the federation in a direct or indirect manner and, as such, can derive benefits from the existence of such a federation (with or without cost).

As we consider a federation of facilities for Future Internet (FI) experimentation, the benefits expected are not only related to business opportunities derived from making experiments. The outcomes of FI experimentation have also a potential social or cultural dimension.

The federation is at the very centre of the FIRE ecosystem. The federation is established to make experimentation across facilities easier. The main stakeholders within the federation are therefore the experimenters, facility providers and the federator, who facilitates their relationship as can be seen in Figure 2.

Many other stakeholders are active in the same ecosystem. These can be split in 4 categories: end users, policy makers and funding bodies, suppliers and research initiatives.

Figure 2: Fed4FIRE landscape

Experimenters Facility providers Federator Facilitates relationship Demand resources & services Provide resources & services End-‐users Retrieves value Provides funding Retrieve value Provide requirements & feedback Testbed software developers Infrastructure & service suppliers Provide infrastructure and services Provide software Research initiatives Exchange information Policy makers Funding bodies

Support & enforces

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The stakeholders identified in the following subsections match roles inside and around the current and future federation. A role can be played by different actors (or stakeholders). For example, a software company providing IT services to a facility can also become an experimenter. A facility provider can also provide hardware resources to another facility owner. The fact that a certain stakeholder plays several roles is only relevant for that particular stakeholder and its own interests but can be discarded in a general analysis of the Fed4FIRE landscape. It will still be important in the analysis of the future business scenarios.

3.1

Main stakeholders

There are three main stakeholder types in Fed4FIRE: experimenters, facility providers and the federator. These are classed as the main ones because they are the primary participants in a federation – it would be difficult (though not impossible) for a federation to operate without all of these three stakeholder types.

3.1.1 Experimenter

Experimenters are the players that want to use the FI experimentation facilities for their research and development work. They have a demand for experimentation resources for differing objectives:

o Academic: universities or research centres undertaking long(er) term research for largely computer science endeavours. They are typically funded by research grants, long term regional research projects or EC funded projects. The outcome is typically exploited through publications but there is also a tendency towards generating IPR for further commercial exploitation.

o Industry: commercial companies, including SMEs, testing systems for specific operational scenarios or compliance. These activities are typically funded directly by the company or by government agencies for economic development. The outcome is usually owned entirely by the company and exploited for innovation in products and services.

o Academic/industrial partnerships: universities or research centres undertaking short/medium term applied research with industry for the purpose of knowledge transfer and knowledge creation. This could be funded by direct commercial investment, or via joint research projects at national or European scale. The outcome is typically exploited through licensed IPR in new products or transferred to spin-‐off companies. The main benefit for experimenters is the ability to experiment. This is already provided by the facilities, but a federation of facilities provides much greater scope and flexibility for the experimenter: the federation of heterogeneous facilities brings the possibility to carry out large scale experiments in a multi-‐technology and multi-‐vendor environment. Moreover, experimenters can benefit from services offered by the federation, such as operational support and SLA guarantees. Experimenters may or may not be charged for the use of the experimentation facilities and related services. This will mostly depend on the experimenter profile and on whether the facilities involved in the experiment are commercially exploited or not.

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3.1.2 Facility provider

These are the owners, operators and maintainers of experimentation facilities1_{who offer facility} services and experimentation resources to experimenters. We find two major communities within facility providers (in line with the activities of FIRE).

1. Infrastructure facilities: experimentation facilities that support the researchers in the fields of fixed and wireless networking, sensor networks, computing and storage, etc.

2. Service and application facilities: experimentation facilities that support researchers in the field of service platforms, IMS, cloud services, Internet of Things, etc.

The main benefits a federation brings to facility providers is the possibility to improve the attractiveness to the facility by embedding it into a broader community (e.g. by the use of common interfaces and best practices), increasing the usage of the facility and enhancing its reputation. Infrastructure providers can also have access to a range of common tools, frameworks and libraries that reduce operational costs in terms of maintenance and improvements of the facility. Moreover, SLA agreements may help facility providers protect their infrastructure against potential abuse, misuse or damages introduced by experimenters by establishing a trust framework including rights and obligations of all parties involved in an experiment.

3.1.3 Federator

The federator is a body, which enables federation to happen between the stakeholders, i.e. to enable them to communicate, understand each other and cooperate with each other to mutual benefit. The federator may have a number of different functions (these are dependent on the business scenario), but all the federator’s functions contribute to the goal of enabling federation.

The federator is distinct from the other two main stakeholders, the experimenter and the facility provider. The experimenter behaves as a consumer, and a facility provider behaves as a supplier, while the federator enables them to talk to each other and others of their kind.

The federator might also play the role of business facilitator and foster relationships within a broader reach of facility providers and experimenters by bringing market knowledge allowing better business opportunities.

We assert that sustainability work in Fed4FIRE incorporates the role of the federator2_{. The federator} enables the federation to operate, and the federator’s survival depends on successful operation of the federation. To achieve this, not only must the federator make it possible for the federation to operate, but it must also determine clear benefits / value for the other main stakeholders.

1_{Facilities bringing their resources to the federation can be individual facilities but also facilities that group} several facilities assembled and operating under a common framework. In the latter case, the facility would be a federated entity joining a higher level federation. It can also happen that within this federated facility, only some of the facilities are represented in the future federation. This is the case of BonFIRE, for example, in Fed4FIRE.

2_{The Federation Authority (FFA) (Task 8.2 of Fed4FIRE project) is a good candidate for the role of federator. It} is a body in charge of determining and possibly operating processes, conventions & policies to carry out the sustainable operation of the federation after Fed4FIRE. Thus, the commitments of all involved parties are defined and ruled by this entity. The FFA is a guarantee for the overall governance of the federation and is thus essential not only for the sustainability but also for the operational aspects. All stakeholders participating in the federation must accept this authority and its decisions since this will constitute the reference framework for the operation of the federation.

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3.2

Other stakeholders

Four other stakeholder types defined in Fed4FIRE: end users, policy makers and funding bodies, suppliers and other research initiatives. They will play a role in the overall value network, but are not core to the federation itself.

3.2.1 End users

End users are the potential target users of the experiment object and thus, in the longer term, they are the most benefited players by the federation and its activity. End users can be citizens, residential or business users who will benefit from the experiment outcomes once they are consolidated and ready to be operational in a production environment. These business users such as SMEs or big corporate companies might become an important stakeholder driving demand for future experimentation. As they can benefit from the experimentation services offered by the federation, they might represent an important revenue stream for the federation (through the experimenters). Depending on the case, end users might also participate in experiments. End users collaborating in an experiment are early testers of innovative solutions and their participation will be eased as much as possible by the federation. Their affiliation may or may not be the same as the experimenter’s and, depending on the nature of this relationship, this kind of end-‐user/acceptance testing might also constitute a service provided for the experimenter by a third party (delegated end-‐user testing). 3.2.2 Policy makers and funding bodies

Fed4FIRE will allow large-‐scale multi-‐technological experiments in a multi-‐vendor environment. The outcomes of the experimentation carried out across the federation will guide and support European policy decision makers by contributing to the observation and analysis of the scientific, technical and technological trends and impact. This Technology Watch dimension of Fed4FIRE will help strategic decision making by supporting:

• The anticipation of technological, social and commercial changes • The identification of stakeholders and players

• The elaboration of strategic plans

As far as funding bodies are concerned, the European Commission is the main player as far as Fed4FIRE is concerned, since it provides funds for Fed4FIRE project and many other FIRE activities. Other funding bodies for experimentation and infrastructure investment can be at national, regional or local levels.

3.2.3 Suppliers

Two types of suppliers have been defined: developers of facility software, and suppliers of infrastructure and services. Both are discussed in the following paragraphs. They are supporting the federation through the facility providers.

Developers of facility software (tools)

Software developers will provide tools to operate and monitor the facilities, supporting the experimentation lifecycle process. The tools to be used can be community open source tools or other software provided by system integrators or any software developer (e.g. an SME or even a facility provider).

The main interest for software developers is related to both revenue generation and the stimulation for innovation by dealing with such heterogeneous environments based on advanced technologies.

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Suppliers of infrastructure and services

This category includes network equipment manufacturers developing and providing networking devices, sensor manufacturers, IT equipment, etc. to the facilities. These providers must create products that conform to standardized protocols, function under heavy load scenarios, and perform reliably under a broad range of conditions. The federation provides a unique opportunity for them to evaluate their products in a heterogeneous environment that anticipates technological trends.3 Besides, manufacturers can leverage from such a complex environment to increase their expertise and reduce test cycle time, thanks to the feedback provided by experiments and facility providers. Service suppliers such as commercial internet providers (telecom operators) or developers of general purpose tools (Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.) can also be included under this role.

GÉANT, which is the pan-‐European research and education network that interconnects Europe’s National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) is also included in this category. The federation will contribute to leveraging this investment and will provide valuable requirements and feedback for further improvements identified.

3.2.4 Research initiatives

Research initiatives are other projects and research activities the federation interacts with. AmpliFIRE, XiFi, BonFIRE are examples of these initiatives as described in section 1.2.

The federator will exchange information with existing projects and research initiatives. This will create synergies and contribute to develop a harmonised FIRE Vision in relation to transition towards Horizon 2020.

3_{In case new hardware is developed and early performance testing is executed making use of the} experimentation services offered by the facilities, we can also consider them as experimenters.

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4

Potential services offered by the federator

The federator provides benefits to its main stakeholders, experimenters and experimentation facilities. These benefits are the result of a set of services provided by the federator to each of them. Sections 4.1 and 4.2 enumerate the services that can be offered by the federator. Services are categorized based on two criteria: the user of the service (experimenters and experimentation facilities) and the importance of the service (core and supplementary services).

Core services are considered as an expected amenity by the end users. Additional or supplementary services are considered as nice to have.

The federator focuses on the provisioning of the core services but could also implement certain supplementary services. It is key to understand the benefits of a service and to understand how the provisioning of a service will contribute to the cost of a running federation. Some services may have a large benefit but only cost a little to provision while for others the opposite may be true.

A goal of this deliverable is to identify, classify and describe the possible services. The next step in this process is to evaluate the value of these services in a cost-‐benefit analysis. To shed light on the costs of a service a lightweight and easy-‐to-‐use cost accounting template is used, which is presented in section 4.2. This template will be used during the project to estimate the cost of a service. Some first results have been gathered which are presented in Appendix A. As quantification of the value of a service is much harder and may often provide unreliable results, a qualitative approach will be pursued during the project.

4.1

Potential services offered to the experimenter

This section lists the services that could be offered by a federator to experimenters). A distinction is made between core services (the main task to execute) and supplementary services (nice to haves). Table 2 gives a high level overview of the services. As these services themselves are consisting of sub-‐ processes and activities, a more detailed description follows in the upcoming subsections 4.1.1 to 4.1.5.

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Table 2: List of potential services offered to the experimenter To e xp er im en te rs Cor e se rv ic es

The ability to experiment across experimentation facilities

The federation of heterogeneous facilities brings the possibility to carry out large scale experiments in a multi-‐technology and multi-‐vendor environment. The ability to experiment can include following activities such as making a platform available, authentication and authorization, resources discovery and reservation, experiment configuration and measurements. This is the core service of the every testbed facility to attract experimenters.

Central portal

A centrally managed point of information should be set up, in order to inform the experimenter about the federation, the different facilities joined, and services offered. This point of information can be extended with additional features relating to the experiment lifecycle such as authentication, resource reservation, etc.

Su pp lem en tar y ser vi ces Experimenter training

The federator offers experimenter training via training sessions and general support. The federation will thereby increase awareness and reduce the effort and time required to run experiments and reduce the risk of failure due to misconfiguration of facilities.

Shared support services

The federator offers experimenters a central contact point for experiment support to deal with experimenter problems and to help experimenters with designing

experiments. These include providing help about services, providing information about facility capabilities, organizing administrative functions dealing with access rights, etc. This service includes activities such as Incident and service request management, problem management and advice

SLA guarantees

The experimenters have access to specifications, tools and services for SLAs that can support the formal definition of the relationship between facility providers and the experimenters as a mechanism to increase trust in the facilities by encoding security and dependability commitments and ensuring the level of Quality of Service is maintained to an acceptable level. This service can include activities such as Service Level Management and Operational Level Agreements (SLAs, OLAs).

In the next subsections the services offered to experimenters are specified in terms of processes and activities: ability to experiment, experimenter training, shared support services and SLA guarantees. 4.1.1 The ability to experiment

The federation of heterogeneous facilities brings the possibility to carry out large scale experiments in a multi-‐technology and multi-‐vendor environment. Several sub-‐processes and activities can be considered, some with more priority than others, which are presented in Table 3.

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Table 3: Detailed list of processes and activities related to experimentation

Authentication and

authorization

Authentication includes the processes for establishing roots of trust and issuing identities within a federation. Authorization includes the capabilities to protect access to data and other resources for only authorized individuals, including mechanisms for delegation and revocation of rights to experimenters and services operated within the federated organisation of 3rd_{party facilities.}

Resource description and resource discovery

Experimenters using the federation can discover and gather unified information about the resources available at different heterogeneous facilities across the federation, which are described in a generic way, including the offered SLAs. The information includes the requirements of a particular resource (e.g. in terms of interconnectivity or dependencies)

Resource reservation

Experimenters can use an overarching reservation system to reserve resources across facilities joined in the federation. The available resources are dependent on the rights of the user (managed via access policy rules). �

D2.3 First Sustainability Plan

Project Acronym

Deliverable lead

Dai Davies (DANTE)

Keywords

consortium (including the Commission)

contained herein.

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Table of Contents

Figure 1: Components within the sustainability task of the Fed4FIRE project

Business scenarios

Purpose and structure of this deliverable

Contribution to the project objective

Clear understanding of what sustainability means

Literature

Table 1: Literature overview Projects /

FIRE Coordination and Support Actions

FIRE (Sub)federations & projects

Our view on federation and sustainability

What is sustainability?

2.2.1 The value proposition

2.2.2 Operating the federation

2.2.3 Sustainability plans of the individual facilities

Federation stakeholders

Figure 2: Fed4FIRE landscape

Main stakeholders

3.1.1 Experimenter

3.1.2 Facility provider

3.1.3 Federator

Other stakeholders

3.2.1 End users

3.2.3 Suppliers

Suppliers of infrastructure and services

Potential services offered by the federator

Potential services offered to the experimenter

The ability to experiment across experimentation facilities

Shared support services

Table 3: Detailed list of processes and activities related to experimentation