Helix Nebula - The Science Cloud - Lessons learned
- 1. Helix Nebula – The Science Cloud with Grant Agreement 687614 is a Pre-Commercial Procurement Action funded by H2020 Framework Programme Helix Nebula – The Science Cloud Lessons learned ANNUAL CONCERTATION MEETING OF ON-GOING INNOVATION PROCUREMENT PROJECTS Bob Jones CERN 9 March 2017
- 2. Helix Nebula Science Cloud Joint Pre-Commercial Procurement Bob Jones, CERN 2 Procurers: CERN, CNRS, DESY, EMBL-EBI, ESRF, IFAE, INFN, KIT, STFC, SURFSara Experts: Trust-IT & EGI.eu The group of procurers have committed • Procurement funds • Manpower for testing/evaluation • Use-cases with applications & data • In-house IT resources Resulting services will be made available to end- users from many research communities Co-funded via H2020 Grant Agreement 687614 Total procurement budget ~5.3M€
- 3. HNSciCloud project phases and milestones 3 Jan’16 Dec’18 Project kick-off 19 Jan 2016 Open Market Consultation 17 March 40+ companies consulted Tender published 21 July Information Day 7 Sept 90+ requests for clarifications addressed Tender Deadline 19 Sept 10 Bids received engaging ~30 companies and public orgs Design Award 2 Nov 4 consortia awarded contracts Designs submitted 30 Jan 2017 4 designs received, 3 eligible for prototypes Prototype call-off deadline 13 March Prototype Award 3 Apr
- 4. Financial model The lead procurer model proved the most appropriate for HNSciCloud The ability to include additional procurers in the buyers group after the Grant Agreement was signed provided flexibility This was only possible because CERN took the role of lead procurer and «anchor tenant» with sufficient financial commitment and flexibility to accommodate such changes The obligation to publish the amount of PCP funds available reduces financial competition We observed a far smaller variation in financial offers when compared to non-PCP procurements conducted by CERN in the ICT domain 4
- 5. Open Market Consultation The Open Market Consultation (OMC) was important Planning poker technique successfully gathered rapid feedback in a competitive environment We presented the principles of the framework agreement and encouraged potential bidders to raise legal questions before submitting their offers We lacked time for a 2nd OMC event Gathering feedback on a mature draft of the tender documents would probably have reduced the number of requests for clarifications The Tender Information Day helped address many questions and provided a very useful discussion with potential bidders But potential bidders did not raise legal points before the signature of the framework agreement Gathering feedback on the framework agreement and giving a clear reminder that it is NOT negotiable would have caused less irritation for everyone 5
- 6. PCP instrument The PCP model needs to be adapted to support service innovation and product innovation Restrictions on place of performance of the R&D activities are not relevant for software services PCP payment model needs to be more flexible and not be based on a fixed budget per phase and per contractor Pay-per-use model is well established in the services market R&D costs across phases are not the same for services 50% R&D rule for each phase (design, prototype, pilot) limits the scale of deployments to be tested and hence their impact. Propose that 50% R&D rule is maintained for whole PCP but flexibility allowed in each phase We underestimated the time and effort required Each call-off requires at least 2 months for the process itself The effort invested by the buyers group far exceeds that which could be supported with the coordination and networking funds (30% of PCP funds) 6
- 7. Impact of the tender The tender generated a lot of interest in the cloud services market The majority of the submitted bids were of very high quality by companies from EU Member States SMEs were attracted by the tender and have participated in the bidding consortia Public sector organisations, such as universities, were attracted by the tender and have participated in the bidding consortia A significant number of FP7 and H2020 projects were cited in the bids as sources of innovation contributing to the proposed solutions If this is confirmed during the implementation phases then it indicates that PCP offers a potential exploitation path for the results of EC funded projects 7
- 8. Impact: Action 2 of the EC communication: Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe Cutting through the Jungle of Standards Standards referenced in the tender: The ISO/IEC 19086 standard for Service Level Agreements The ISO/IEC 27000 series of standards, notably ISO/IEC 27017 and ISO/IEC 27018, for information security of the resulting services The IEEE 1016-2009 system design document template for the design of the hybrid cloud architecture Note: we awarded higher scores to bids proposing to make the developed software available via open source licenses 10/03/2017 8
- 9. Design phase Prepare detailed information about each use-case, including the desired performance and technical constraints Identify an owner, capable of responding to questions, for each use-case Start the dialogue between the buyers group and the contractors early and continue during the whole phase Set intermediate milestones for each contractor to present their progress Revise the buyers group effort planning when the Request for Tender is published - take into account all milestones and deliverables to be assessed and continuous dialogue with the contractors Establish a technical team of dedicated individuals to collect input from all procurers on use-cases, requirements, interact with the contractors and perform tests More details in the HNSciCloud public report ‘Summary report of the design stage and lessons learned’ available via the website www.HNSciCloud.eu 08/12/2016 9
- 10. 08/12/2016 10
Editor's Notes
- #3: Research organisations from 7 countries have proposed to work together to develop a cross-border joint procurement of innovative cloud services. This is an important change: never before have research organisations across Europe pooled their funds and resources to procure cloud services to support their scientific programmes. eduGAIN federated identity mgmt. should include commercial identity providers taking into account multiple levels of assurance.