1. IWDW-WAQS Technical Committee
Intermountain West Data Warehouse
Monetization / Cost Recovery

2. Concept: Suggested by:
Introduction…
Concept:
Implement a mechanism for recovering a portion of the costs incurred from “non cooperator” use of the Data Warehouse.
Suggested by:
Charis Tuers, Bureau of Land Management (BLM)

3. Initial Questions: Is it feasible? (Do we have the infrastructure?)
Introduction…
Initial Questions:
Is it feasible? (Do we have the infrastructure?)
What do we charge for?
What level of time and effort will be required to manage and operate the infrastructure?
How much do we charge?

4. Basic feasibility study
CSU has an infrastructure for allowing CSU websites to accept online payments via a basic “shopping cart” framework provided by Colorado.gov
Payment processing would be handled by Authorize.net
Credit cards from the major card issuers (including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, and JCB) could be accepted
The “shopping cart” framework could integrate seamlessly into the IWDW website
Users would be redirected to Authorize.net for payment processing, much like what happens when you use PayPal
There’s a 2.25% transaction fee
There’s a flat 75-cent “portal administration fee” per transaction
An account to receive the funds would need to be opened

5. Apportioning the charges
What do we charge for?
Data download? Bandwidth? Hard drives?
Visualization and analysis tools?
Pre- or post-processing tools?
Data upload? Storage space and data management?
Services and support?
How do we “package” the charges?
Subscription model (annual? monthly? per platform?)
Pay-per-use model (what constitutes a “usage scenario”?)
How do we programmatically distinguish between cooperator affiliates and non-cooperator users?

6. Current Service Tiers
IWDW User Classes
IWDW
Services and Features

7. Possible Future Service Tiers

8. Monetization of IWDW Services

9. Data Transfer Disk Transfer – User Disks
User provides disks and shipping
FTP
Most common transfer method
Automated (Minimal effort for IWDW admins)
Disk Transfer – Warehouse Disks
Warehouse provides disks and shipping
User returns disks
Globus
Not yet available
Enhancement of FTP
Outlook
Plausible
Pending Globus Implementation

10. Monetization of IWDW Services

11. Support IWDW Admin Support Email and Forum responses by IWDW Admins
Advanced Support (Modeling Team)
Elevated support from modeling team
Beyond knowledge of IWDW Admins
Outlook:
Most support requests enhance platform quality (E.g. missing data, bad configuration, insufficient documenation)
Burdensome support should be avoided (E.g. CAMx/CMAQ tutorial, information available in documentation)
How to quantify “level of support”?
Pending:
Quantification of support
Additional Personnel?

12. Monetization of IWDW Services

13. Tool Access Manage user access to individual web tools
Manage platforms available to the user in each tool
Free model only provides old platform data in tools
E.g. web tools work for 2008b on free model, 2011a/b (current platform) requires subscription
Outlook:
Per user access to tools - Plausible
Per user access to limited platforms in tools – Major effort
May be undesirable as tools serve to entice new users
Pending
Growth of user base
Refinement of tools

14. Monetization of IWDW Services

15. Technical Development
New Tool Development
Development of new web tools
Ingestion
Bring user data to IWDW tools
Wiki Space
Hosted by IWDW
Managed/edited by user
AMET Plot Generation
Generate collection of MPE plots
Not Implemented
Outlook:
Wiki Space plausible
Pending
Refinement of IWDW systems
Additional personnel

16. Monetization of IWDW Services

17. Data Management Archiving Data is stored on disk
Offline, not available via Data Request
Publication
Data is stored on file server
Available via Data Request (i.e. has meta data)
Immediate Access
Data requests are fulfilled without review by stewards group.
Outlook
Plausible
Pending
Additional file server (In Progress)
Offline disk capacity growth (Continuously In Progress)
Archive Data Tracking
Policy & Procedure considerations

18. Monetization of IWDW Services

19. Other
Citation
Require some level of subscription in order to cite IWDW data
Number of Users
Restrict the number of users per subscription
Outlook
Citation – Plausible but maybe undesirable?
Number of Users – Plausible but not many users presently
Pending
Growth of user base
Policy and Procedure considerations re Citation

20. Current Status

21. Conclusion
Additional goals:
Any pricing model needs to be simple and well described
The payment system should be as automatic as possible

22. How much can we expect to recover per unit time?
Conclusion
Homework:
What do we charge for?
How much do we charge?
How much can we expect to recover per unit time?
Is the expected recovery amount worth the time and effort to implement this?