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This presentation discusses the objectives, recommendations, and key questions related to the sustainability of the European Middleware Initiative (EMI) project. It explores the need for collaboration with commercial companies, adoption of off-the-shelf components, establishment of service level agreements, and expansion of usage beyond traditional users. The presentation also highlights the value proposition of EMI for technical and end users.
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NA3 & Sustainability Morris Riedel (JUELICH) Peter Stefan (NIIF) et al. EMI Vision Meeting, Geneva, 14th-15th December 2011
Objectives & Review Recommendation • DoW Sustainability • Will be improved by establishing collaboration programs with commercial companies, adopting off-the-shelf components to reduce maintenance costs and to facilitate easier adoption by wider user communities. • The definition together with the resource providers of measureable Service Level Agreements will provide the base for establishing more standard service provision business models. • Recommendation 6 • Improve the sustainability plans and commit to a specified period of support for EMI software and services after the end of the project (e.g. the Monte Bianco release), which is more convincing than the currently anticipated 3 months. • How long can we achieve a commitment to EMI from partners? EMI Sustainability
Three areas of work towards sustainability • Inspire and confirm commitment from key stakeholders/users • ScienceSoft (Alberto later) for the community • Adopt lesson learned from industry and successful open source models • Company SysFera seems to make real money • Learn from RedHat (‘support just costs’) • Adopt standards to enable re-use of EMI components ‘outside the DCI ecosystem’ • Expand usage via standard-based components • Enable switch products in unsustainable times EMI Sustainability
Key Questions to Answer • Roundtable at EMI AHM Padua Questions • Discussed Lighthouse Challenges in NA3 • NA3 Comments to Alberto’s Draft proposal • Timelines and Planning with stakeholders • EGI runs one year longer: how we deliver EMI? • Funding of developers • Obey to the release process (or easier process) • Engage further in ‘Inter-component’ work • Sustain common developments (STS, EMI Registry, common authN lib, EMI-ES?, etc.) • Developments to follow trends (e.g. Oauth) EMI Sustainability
EMI Mission Statement The European Middleware Initiative (EMI) project represents a close collaboration of the major European middleware providers - ARC, gLite, UNICORE and dCache - to explore and implement sustainable models to support, harmonise and evolve the distributed computing and data management middleware for deployment in EGI, PRACE and other distributed e-Infrastructures EMI Sustainability
EMI Middleware Evolution Before EMI 3 years After EMI Applications Integrators, System Administrators Standard interfaces Specialized services, professional support and customization Standard interfaces EMI Reference Services Standards,New technologies (clouds) Users and Infrastructure Requirements EMI Sustainability
Complementary to Technology Strategies • Understand and define ‘EMI value proposition’ far beyond the DCI space • Sustainability: Inspire and confirm commitment from key stakeholders/users • Adopt lesson learned from industry and successful open source models • Contribute to open standards to enable re-use of EMI components ‘outside the DCI ecosystem’ • Expand usage ‘beyond traditional users’ EMI Sustainability
Sustainability Drivers Expansion of the user base Decrease of costs Commercial activities EMI Roadmap
Examples: Open Source Models Community model Apache, Eclipse Red Hat, Canonical MySQL, Zarafa EMI and other publicly funded projects (“unstable” future) Support contracts or Subscription model Dual-licensing or Commercial model Macro R&D Infrastructures model From Open Source to long-term sustainability: Review of Business Models and Case studies, Chang et al. EMI Sustainability
Open Source Models Incubation in the right condition becomes Community model Macro R&D Infrastructures model Support contracts or Subscription model Dual-licensing or Commercial model EMI Sustainability
Some lessons learned from RedHat • Specific concrete advice for an open source community • Clearly have an idea/plan what you offer; who would pay for this? What is the “EMI value”? • Identify active and strong team leaders – they are the key in the open source community • Stop “free” support model of today, it is an important income on support models (week, premium) to fund the core set of people With thanks to Francois Lucatelli (~10 years in RedHat) EMI Sustainability
EMI Value for Technical Users • A streamlined middleware distribution available from a well-defined place • EMI Repository http://eticssoft.web.cern.ch now, EPEL/Debian as component mature • Regularly published service releases • Better integration with Fedora/EPEL (and compatible OSs) and Debian • Open to external contribution • Source packages fully available • A single patch submission channel (GGUS) EMI Sustainability
EMI Value for End Users • Stable middleware services delivered with standard Operating Systems • EMI products from different technical areas (compute, data, security, infrastructure) work seamlessly together, well tested • 10 years experience of ‘cutting edge HPC and HTC’ • Open Source model allows • More rapid and transparent improvement of quality; contributions from different sources • Value-added services from experts • Open competition brings better quality EMI Sustainability
EMI Value for EGI[-InSPIRE|.eu] • Open, transparent software releases • EMI Inter-product ecosystem, well-tested • Possibility to implement revenue streams from value-added professional services (support, customization, outsourcing) via commercial SLAs • Possible involvement of commercial companies in the provision of services, thanks to the standard open source approach EMI Sustainability
Points to stimulate the discussions • Scientific institutes miss the organizational structure and capabilities to ‘go business’ • ‘Business-oriented legal departments’: patents, trust insurances, IPR issues • ‘Marketing departments’: influence 1000^x at the same time instead of 10-100 per community • ‘Maintenance vs. research’: software stability vs. scientific innovation conflicts; different careers • Two possibilities now • Institutes establish necessary departments/skills • Let commercial companies do support and focus on research EMI Sustainability
Next Steps • Strategic planning (new NA3 work package) • Work plans in current deliverable and include new activities; also ‘products and scientific results‘ • ‘Change’ the way we work towards described models; implement initial ideas in project lifetime • Concrete EMI product factsheets of services including key usage models, maturity, etc. • Talk, but more important – listen – to the community; what they want; who would pay? • Align with the broader (scientific) community • EMI products in EPEL; case studies; ‘Works with EMI’, address ‘market’ (i.e. users) requirements… EMI Sustainability
Thank you EMI is partially funded by the European Commission under Grant Agreement INFSO-RI-261611 EMI Roadmap
Add-on: interview Technicolor • TECHNICOLOR Interview • Movies on demand, home entertainment, etc. • Discussions reveal interesting common interests and ‘the same problems’ • ‘Sharing movies in the neighborhood’ Vos • Delegating rights to see a movie to another delegation of end-user rights/roles • Need for security standards SAML/XACML • Next steps • Discussions whether EMI products might help • In NA3 Tracker… EMI Sustainability
Add-on: interview UK SSI • UK Software Sustainability Institute • Scientific software in the UK, OMII-UK follow-on • Sustainability discussions • Some UK institutions provide partially people • Wide range of products: GridSAM, MPI codes, etc. • Hard to get funding from UK academic councils for software maintenance only • Next steps • Work together with the UK SSI towards a EU-wide open software foundation/approach EMI Sustainability
Add-on: e-IRG Panel – Software role? • e-IRG Meeting Poznan – last week • Panel with ESFRI co-chair, EGI, PRACE, user community representatives • Question to the panel: role of software? • Software can be only maintained via advancement • Each user community is responsible for its software stack – open whether 24/7 is realistic • Next steps • Follow e-IRG and make the case that software do matter if you want to create e-Infrastructures EMI Sustainability