1. Possibilities for joint procurement of commercial cloud services for WLCG WLCG Overview Board Bob Jones (CERN) 28 November 2014

2. http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1374172/files/CERN-OPEN-2011-036.pdf Bob Jones (CERN) 28 November 20142 Establish a sustainable multi-tenant cloud computing infrastructure in Europe Initially based on the needs for the European Research Area & space agencies Based on commercial services from multiple IT industry providers Adhere to internationally recognised policies and quality standards Governance structure involving all stakeholders

3. The Helix Nebula Initiative Strategic Plan  Establish multi- tenant, multi- provider cloud infrastructure  Identify and adopt policies for trust, security and privacy  Create governance structure  Define funding schemes Strategic Plan  Establish multi- tenant, multi- provider cloud infrastructure  Identify and adopt policies for trust, security and privacy  Create governance structure  Define funding schemes To support the computing capacity needs for the ATLAS experiment Setting up a new service to simplify analysis of large genomes, for a deeper insight into evolution and biodiversity To create an Earth Observation platform, focusing on earthquake and volcano research To improve the speed and quality of research for finding surrogate biomarkers based on brain images Adopters Suppliers Additional Users: Bob Jones (CERN) 28 November 20143

4. Why commercial IaaS? Deployment tests have been made with a number of IaaS providers (ATOS, CloudSigma, T-Systems) directly and via a common broker (HNX) ATLAS simulation jobs (up to 1000 VMs in parallel) were used as a test application (CPU intensive, cloud storage used as a short-term cache) and showed the use of commercial IaaS is technically feasible for simulation workloads variations in APIs can be overcome with reasonable technical effort independent monitoring of the quality of service offered and resources consumed is essential In Oct 2014 a price enquiry requesting up to 3000 concurrent VMs for a period of 6 weeks produced interesting price points which meant the difference when compared to the cost of in- house provisioning was greatly reduced

5. Potential benefits of joint procurement Convergence between procurers on specifications increases the size of the market and hence attracts the interest of more suppliers A larger market with more suppliers encourages faster innovation Joint preparation of specifications can reduce the cost of procurement activities and offer better procurement conditions for each participating organisation Opportunity for participants to gain experience with provisioning commercial cloud services for their users Bob Jones (CERN) 28 November 20145

6. Potential benefits of joint procurement via an EC project Activities to develop the specifications and solutions with suppliers can be co-funded by the EC The level of EC co-funding for procurement depends on the phase within the innovation lifecycle for the goods/services to be procured Linked to the level of risk involved Earlier in the cycle → higher the rate of co-funding Closer to commercialisation → lower the rate of co-funding Bob Jones (CERN) 28 November 20146

7. PCP PPI Bob Jones (CERN) 28 November 20147

8. ICT 8 – 2015: Boosting public sector productivity and innovation through cloud computing services http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/9081-ict-08-2015.html#tab1 Submission deadline 14 April 2015 - funded projects could start Jan 2016 with the actual procurement during 2017/8 Foresee to fund projects with a large EC contribution (5 – 8M€) Pre-commercial procurement for public sector cloud computing services (PCP) common requirements and terms of reference for future procurement of cloud computing services (9M€) Public procurement of innovative cloud computing solutions (PPI) organizing joint procurement of innovative cloud services by public authorities (13M€)

9. Special conditions apply to PCP/PPI projects http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/wp/2014_2015/annexes/h2020-wp1415-annex-e-inproc_en.pdf Procurement of innovative solutions 'Public procurement of innovative solutions (PPI)' means procurement where contracting authorities act as a launch customer of innovative goods or services which are not yet available on a large-scale commercial basis, and may include conformance testing Procurement process must be compliant with EC rules Open to all suppliers across the 28 EC member states ‘Procurers should avoid the use of selection criteria based on disproportion qualification requirements’ Published in the official EU journal of public procurement EC co-funding is proportional to the procurement commitment of the partners The bigger the procurement the more funds that can be requested from the EC NOTE: “Potential providers of solutions sought for by a PPI cannot be beneficiaries in an action during which this PPI is planned or undertaken”

10. Other potential funding sources Investment by the funding agencies and the EC could also be linked to national or regional funding via European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) available in each country Political engagement at a national level will be required to secure ESIF money http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/pcp/docs/23ja n2014-synergies-h2020-esif.pdf http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/pcp/docs/23ja n2014-synergies-h2020-esif.pdf

11. Possible approach to joint procurement Each participant pledges money and limited manpower to a joint procurement Submit a PPI proposal for IaaS cloud services to the EC by 14 April 2015 The EC co-funding would be used for project management and additional manpower and procurement capacity across the participants The project would develop a common set of specifications (technical and contractual) in conjunction with industry suitable for data intensive research The financial and manpower pledges by the participants would be needed for 2016 -2017 CERN would procure the cloud services on behalf of the participants according to the CERN procurement process but extended to companies from CERN member states and EU28 The participants would be allocated a proportion of the total cloud services procured at the same ratio as their financial commitment Some preparatory work (not funded by the EC) could start in 2015 with the participants building on work performed within the Helix Nebula initiative

12. How to proceed Determine by Jan 2015 if submitting an EC PPI proposal makes sense: Interest of procuring organisations – added value for the participants Potential market size (i.e. aggregated procurement capacity) – determines level of EC funding that could be requested Conformity of procurement processes with EC rules – do our organisations qualify as ‘procuring authorities’