[Fiware-pcc] RATHER IMPORTANT: Physical infrastructure for the FI-WARE Testbed and OpenLab

[Juanjo Hierro]

Hi all,

  Sorry for the long email, but it is difficult to keep it shorter and we definitively need that the FI-WARE PCC takes a look at it and take a decision ASAP, preferably before end of this week.

  This mail is to update you on our developments regarding the definition of the physical infrastructure that will be linked to both the FI-WARE Testbed and the FI-WARE Open Lab (which is essentially an enlargement of the FI-WARE Testbed in terms of resources, plus the fact that usage will not be limited to UC projects).

  The plan below has been agreed with Engineering as leader of WP10 (Testbed).

  We have been able to negotiate with Red.es, a public entity linked to the Spanish Ministry of Industry, the plan for acquiring, deploying and operating a rather ambitious physical infrastructure to support the FI-WARE Testbed and the FI-WARE Open Lab.     I hope that you will share our excitement about what we have managed to agree with them since it will allow us to setup a rather ambitious FI-WARE Testbed/OpenLab.

  The budget devoted to acquisition of the equipments (computing, storage and communication) for such physical infrastructure would be of about 950 KEUR and would be put by Red.es, with support of Regional funds.   You have read it well: acquired equipments, for almost as much as 1MEUR of budget, will be made available to FI-WARE *WITHOUT ANY COST TO THE PROJECT*.    Acquired equipments will be owned by Red.es, but they will be for our exclusive usage.   Red.es will also manage deployment of those equipments in a dedicated space within a DataCenter they own and operate.   To take advantage of the Regional funds, this datacenter should be placed in Sevilla (a city in Andalucia, who is one of the developing regions that may take advantage of these regional funds).    On the other hand, Red.es will also warrant connectivity to Internet through the RedIris network they operate.   RedIris is the Spanish National Research and Education Network connected to the GEANT Pan-European Research Network and the Internet.   It will responsability of FI-WARE to deploy FI-WARE GEs on top of this physical setup, and operate the deployed FI-WARE Instance (this, of course, will mean that Red.es will have to provide admin access privileges to people working in FI-WARE)

  However, in order to put in place this ambitious plan, we need to allocate some resources that we could execute to subcontract some of the services/activities that we would need Red.es to assume, namely:

 *   Support in the design of the physical infrastructure of the FI-WARE Testbed/OpenLab (number and characteristics of equipments to be placed, as well as how they will be setup)
 *   Coordination of activities linked to the process of public adquisition of the equipments linked to the physical infrastructure of the FI-WARE Testbed/OpenLab
 *   Housing of the physical infrastructure linked to the FI-WARE Testbed/OpenLab (basic services to be provided linked to the DataCenter where the physical infrastructure will be deployed)
 *   Provision and operation of connectivity for the DataCenter where the physical infrastructure will be deployed to Internet
 *   Basic DataCenter operation support (i.e., hardware/housing operation)
 *   Logistic support to dissemination events physically located in the place where the FI-WARE Testbed and OpenLab would be physically located (i.e., Sevilla): inaguration of the testbed, etc.

  All these activities may cost a lot, but we have negotiated with Red.es, after long negotiations, that the overall budget for subcontracting these activities may be just 190 KEUR for the whole duration of the FI-WARE project.

  Our idea would be to execute the plan in two phases:

 *   In the first phase (setting up of the FI-WARE Testbed physical infrastructure on top of which the first release of the FI-WARE Testbed to be used by UC project will be deployed):
    *   195 KEUR will be spent by Red.es to acquisition of equipments and (therefore, not paid by FI-WARE)
    *   40-50 KEUR will be spent by FI-WARE to subcontract activities to Red.es (described in our initial mail, still in negotiation)

 *   In the second phase (enlargement of the FI-WARE Testbed physical infrastructure on top of which the second release of the FI-WARE Testbed to become part of the FI-WARE Open Innovation Lab):
    *   750 KEUR will be spent by Red.es to acquisition of equipments (therefore, not paid by FI-WARE)
    *   140-150 KEUR (190 KEUR minus what we had spent in the first phase) will be spent by FI-WARE to subcontract activities to Red.es (same ones described in our initial mail)

    The deal is feasible because we are just talking about a win-win situation:

 *   Red.es will run a project that will be partially funded by European Regional Development funds (FEDER funds) and they have the mission of managing that sort of projects for ICT in Spain.   They find that running a project that will allow that the main dedicated FI-WARE DataCenter part of the FI-WARE Testbed be located in a developing region in Spain, as Andalucia, fits very well their goals.   Second, Red.es also operates the RedIris network as explained above and they believe that placing the core FI-WARE DataCenter as a node connected to this network is a plus.   It may foster development of research projects based on FI-WARE technologies, for example.    Third, their mission is also to stimulate creation of innovative ICT infrastructures that easy modernization of SME businesses and the creation of IT SME start-ups in Spain.   They believe FI-WARE may also help there.    Last but not least, setting up a core node of the FI-WARE testbed in Spain has a "political" value on its own and this is also something that they have bought (which I believe means rather good news).  There may be other benefits for Red.es you can easily infer if you think about the visibility of the FI-PPP program but I guess these are the main ones.
 *   The deal is, of course, quite good for FI-WARE since, as you see, we put 190 KEUR and we get, in return, 1MEUR in equipments plus services that cost much more than 190 KEUR in my honest opinion (for me, all the things they will be able to do in return of the 190 KEUR we subcontract would cost us much more).   Thinking "big", we may think that this plan may stimulate that others propose donating another datacenters for free so that the physical infrastructure of the FI-WARE Testbed is enlarged a we end up building a large pan-european infrastructure.

  Now, the point is that we have to manage how we can obtain this 190 KEUR from the existing budget and hire the services from Red.es described above.   After some careful analysis, we have found that this budget for subcontracting could be obtained by performing the following rearrangements in the existing budget:

 *   We would propose to reduce the budget currently booked for funding allowances and trips for meetings of the Scientific Council (SC) and Market Advisory Councils (MAC) so that it becomes 41 KEUR.   This action would free 100 KEUR.   We believe that it can be implemented by just reducing the number of members in both councils (from 18 to 8 regarding the SC and from 10 to 5 regarding the MAC), reducing the number of meetings of the SC (up to 2) and the duration of meetings (just one day). Funding per person and trip would be limited to 1.150 EUR.
 *   Devoting 20 KEUR of the 79 KEUR budgeted for coordination of events, to events to be located in Sevilla (place where DataCenter linked to the FI-WARE Testbed/OpenLab would be located)
 *   Transferring funding of some of the PMs linked to UPM in WP6 (Data/Context Management) into budget for subcontracting of activities to be carried out by Red.es (this has been agreed with UPM).   This should free aprox the other 70 KEUR that are needed.

  This rearrangements would mean that no budget/funding of existing partners (apart from UPM :-) would be really affected.   If we were not able to implement a rearrangement like this we are afraid we would have to go for other schemes (like deducting a % of the funding of each partners) which is always hard to implement and lead to never-ending discussions.   And we lack of time for it.

  I would rather like to implement these changes in the current amendment of the FI-WARE DoW we are negotiating right now because of the Open Calls and other stuff.   That would allow us to implement the plan ASAP (and you know that either we launch acquisition of the physical infrastructure soon or we are going to experience big problems).   This would be needed in order to make sure that we are able to setup the physical infrastructure on time.   We would work so that the physical infrastructure would be operative beginning of May to start integration of FI-WARE components on top.   Official inauguration of the FI-WARE Testbed/OpenLab could take place on June 6th, matching the World IPv6 Launch day (http://www.worldipv6launch.org/) in order to achieve the greatest visibility.   There, we would publicly announce the official date for availability of the FI-WARE Testbed and we would disseminate our plans.

  We look forward your positive response.    Design of the requirements for the physical infrastructure to be acquired will be worked out with responsible of WP10 and we need to move fast on that space.

  Best regards,

-- Juanjo

-------------
Product Development and Innovation (PDI) - Telefonica Digital
website: www.tid.es<http://www.tid.es>
email: jhierro at tid.es<mailto:jhierro at tid.es>
twitter: twitter.com/JuanjoHierro

FI-WARE (European Future Internet Core Platform) Chief Architect

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