Web: OMII-UK: From Software to Sustainable Systems Neil Chue Hong

Web: What makes something sustainable? “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life.” Sustainable systems demonstrate four key factors: o cohesion and identity: clear, common goals o tolerance of diversity: no “one way to do it” o conservative use of resources o adaptability to change "Teach a man to fish, and you introduce another competitor into the overcrowded fishing industry. Give a man a fish, and you stimulate demand for your product"

Web: Overview OMII-UK vision Supporting use of software Helping establish communities Software as a shared facility

Web: Our Mission… OMII-UK aims to provide software and support to enable a sustained future for the UK e-Science community and its international collaborators Promote the use of good-quality open-source software Reduce the risk of moving to new e-infrastructure world Recognise distinct user communities: by domain and function We help you to make the software you use sustainable!

Web:

Supporting Use of Software OMII-UK o help provide access to applications o help provide support for software o help provide easy to install components o help promote standards to make it easier to interoperate Skills available to support long term sustainability o productise pieces of software developed elsewhere

Web: Helping establish communities Communities require more than functional software o documentation and training o guaranteed long-term support o stable APIs as well as interoperable standards o sharing of best practice and issues Clear understanding of the requirements that make them a distinct community

Web:

Commissioned Software Programme Identify gaps in functionality or quality required from community o e.g. through SUPER report Provide funding back into the community to meet specific needs o through calls, or through responsive funding o Portlets, Grid APIs, Desktop Grids

Web: ENGAGE Initiative with NGS to follow up on SUPER and target individual research groups o Capture research scenarios o Collaborate on e-Infrastructure designs o Implementation and deployment Aim to create specific examples of research benefit from e-Infrastructure Get “non e-Science” groups to participate

Web: OMII-UK Community Engagement PALs and Beta-Testers Open Forums User Board Different ways of understanding community needs and gathering feedback Multiple approaches from multiple skill bases to attack a common problem

Web: Software as a shared facility Communities develop to share workload and develop specialisms o but grow a community too large and it lacks cohesion OMII-UK is able to identify and generate synergies amongst different groups o identify specialisms which are useful across disciplines o create benefit without diluting community vision o provide networking and sharing of best practice Centralise software “provision” as facility

Web: Something to finish on… “Connected, distributed systems, from power grids to business firms to even entire economies, are both more fragile and more robust than populations of isolated entities.” Duncan J. Watts We need to build sustainable, resilient systems to achieve global usability