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Cyberinfrastructure, Institutions, and Sustainability

Explore the transition to sustainable institutional support for cyberinfrastructure projects through collaborative approaches, common foundations, and openness to align with broader goals. Enhance CI integration through shared resources and seamless interoperability.

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Cyberinfrastructure, Institutions, and Sustainability

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  1. Christopher J. Mackie Associate Program Officer The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation “Designing Virtual Organizations…” Collaborative Expedition Workshop Arlington, VA Cyberinfrastructure, Institutions, and Sustainability

  2. Largest non-governmental, NFP funder of OSS infrastructure projects in the world, to our knowledge, through the Program in Research in Information Technology (RIT) Applications and middleware; moving toward SOA In the last 6 years, approximately two dozen projects: Mellon and Cyberinfrastructure

  3. Our OSS projects now built by virtual development orgs (VDOs) • 3-12 institutions; most staff formally seconded to VDO • VDO has project mgr, staff: reports to project Board • $6m-40m total capitalization • Kuali, FLUID • “Virtual Departments” for LibArts colleges • Work through consortia (NITLE, ACA) • Virtual Research Orgs • SEASR • Sakai Mellon and Virtual Orgs

  4. The NSF vision is powerful and plausible Only one problem: what if it works…? “Don’t do anything great unless you are prepared to survive the celebration.” – John Madden We should plan now for the transition from term-limited NSF project support to sustainable institutional support Without a transition plan, costs will go up, adoption down; sustainability (on a broad basis) may not be possible NSF’s Cyberinfrastructure vision

  5. Internal IT capacity is declining • Demand is increasing faster than budget • Staff are aging; labor markets are inhospitable • Home-brew enterprise software is growing too expensive to build or maintain • Software development & maintenance capacity is vanishing; vendor dependence is increasing • Application Overburden • $heer number of applications • Incompatible stack$ • Adoption & integration challenge$ • $ilo$ Institutional Trends

  6. Adoption, maintenance costs must be kept to a minimum • Minimize number of stacks • Minimize number of org silos • CI must integrate/interoperate smoothly with existing infrastructure • AuthN/AuthZ/IdM • Workflow, UI • Academic systems (LMS, calendaring, etc.) • Admin systems (ERP, HR, student, research admin) • Important for CI integration today; more so post-funding • We don’t want Sophie’s choice Sustaining CI Thru Campuses

  7. Goal: make CI adoptable and sustainable for the widest possible number and variety of higher education institutions • Four strategies • Bring the right people to the table • Seek common foundations • Embrace openness and standards • Merge infrastructures prospectively Sustainability Goals, Strategies

  8. If you build it, they will not come…. • Economic/technological/pragmatic barriers • Emotional barriers (NIH syndrome, status, competition, ego) • All relevant stakeholders • Key constituencies for transition and sustainability • CIO/IT (in addition to CS) • Provost • Commercial vendors • Diversity is key • So is representativeness • If we build it, we’re already there. Bring the right people

  9. Architecture: SOA? • Offers many potential gains • Track record in for-profit, but not in K-12 or higher ed • Hardly a panacea: mindless implementations (“SOA apps”) can reproduce old problems at new levels of technological complexity • Still, the alternatives are worse…. • Engineering/Methodologies: Agile Development? • Accepted in operational programming; flexible enough for research programming; but any single approach is a tough sell • Components: SOA middleware? • ESB (including VO-friendly AuthN/AuthZ/IdM) • Workflow/”Business” rules • UI Seek common foundations

  10. Software Interfaces: OKI? OAI-ORE? WS-*? • Protect against bad, early choices • Help with chicken-and-egg dependencies in collaborative projects • Pluggability is a big bonus for components like ESB, workflow, business rules, UI • Interoperability: BPEL? • So many workflow engines, so little time…. • Interoperability standards are the only way to manage proliferation • User Interfaces: FLUID? • Institutions need compliance (e.g., accessibility), consistency, branding • Scholars, students need flexibility, creativity, consistency, local control • Widgets save time, effort for all Embrace Openness and Standards

  11. Identify serendipitous alignments of infrastructure (e,g., middleware layers, common research admin features) • Collaborate on refactoring, generalization of infrastructure to serve multiple projects before the money runs out • Retain distinctive services/workflow/UI layers and autonomous project governance • Merge middleware, common services • Freed resources can be applied to the substantive challenges • The goal is to reduce redundancy, not to reduce project autonomy Merge projects prospectively

  12. SEASR (structured/unstructured rich-media data mining & analysis platform/toolset) www.seasr.org • Goal: Create sustainable, virtual org of humanists, comp scientists • IBM/NCSA • Kuali Suite (ERP, Research Admin, Student) www.kuali.org • Sakai (LMS) www.sakaiproject.org • FEDORA: Repository for the scholarly life-cycle www.fedora.info • MESA: Middleware for Enterprise Services Architectures Mellon SOA/CI Projects

  13. Four middleware layers for NFP ESA • ESB (Q4 2007 alpha) • Business Rules Engine (JBOSS) • Workflow (Mellon/NSF Workshop 3-5 Oct 2007) • FLUID UI (Q4 2007 alpha, www.fluidproject.org) • All open-source, product quality • All will use open-standards interfaces • Can swap out pieces as better options emerge • Can mix and match commercial/OSS pieces • Cross-domain “meta-ESA” for all of higher ed MESA for CI (or Agency) Projects

  14. Robust products, not proofs-of-concept • Healthy vendor ecosystem to provide services: big & small vendors • Easy integration with MESA-using institutions • Meta-inter-disciplinarity (helps CI projects collaborate) • Efficiency (cuts redundancy & maintenance costs) • Focus (on the substance, not the infrastructures) • Sustainability • MESA sustains itself via its own OSS community (and you can contribute) • You only need to sustain the truly unique aspects of your CI WHY Use MESA?

  15. Sustainability isn’t rocket science… • But it requires constant, diligent attention, and a reality-based sustainability plan • Sustainability can’t be an afterthought • Crucial decisions for sustainability are made at every stage of a project • A decision made without thought to sustainability is highly likely to be unsustainable • Sustaining any CI project will be hard… • But sustaining go-it-alone CI projects will be harder still Some Free advice

  16. Christopher J. Mackie Associate Program Officer,Program in Research in Information Technology The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation cjm@mellon.org cjmackie06 @ AIM (609) 924-9424 http://rit.mellon.org Contact information

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