A series of examples of Open Infrastructure projects, and a suggested Open Infrastructure landscape, originally posted as food for thought for an #Innochat discussion on Twitter, June 7, 2010

1. Open Infrastructure
How “Open” do we want to be?
Christian De Neef
Fast Track Consulting – Brussels

2. What is O
Open Infrastructure?
f ?
Physical infrastructure – from railways and
telecommunications networks to scientific tooling
and datacenters – being made available to Clients
other than the Owners, mostly for a fee
Examples of Open Infrastructure projects
Open Infrastructure Landscape

3. Open Infrastructure Examples
O f
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)
• Apply unused CPU cycles on a computer to perform grid computing
• Promotes scientific computing (Research)
• CPU cycles are made available for free
• Qualifying projects acquire CPU cycles for free (admin costs?)
• Research projects must be accepted by BOINC
• The iddl
Th middleware that allows di t ib t d computing i non-commercial
th t ll distributed ti is i l
• Private initiative, owned by the University of California, Berkeley
• Global (in theory), mostly North American usage (in practice)

4. Open Infrastructure Examples
O f
Uniform Interface to Computing Resources (UNICORE/OMII)
• Share CPU cycles between supercomputers to perform grid computing
• Promotes scientific computing (Research)
• CPU cycles are made available against a standard fee
• Initiated to enable German supercomputer centers to provide their users
access to their heterogeneous computing resources
• Both academic and commercial usage
• The middleware is open source, standards based
• Initially owned by German Ministry for Education & Research (BMBF),
now belongs to the community (European funding)
• Global (in theory), mostly European academic usage (in practice)
• Specialized implementations, e.g. Evaluation & risk assessment of
chemicals:

5. Open Infrastructure Examples
O f
Utah Telco Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA)
• Consortium of 16 cities engaged in providing fiber access to businesses
• Promotes competition (against the incumbent service providers)
• US$ 500M State financed (Rural Utilities Service programme)
• Financing to be covered by subscriber revenue (via service providers)
• Attracted 7 services providers (voice, data, video)
• Local i
L l investment, l
t t local usage
l

6. Open Infrastructure Examples
O f
Pilbara Railways
• In Australia, large mining companies operate their own private railways
• The railway systems have been "declared" for third party access
• Promotes competition (avoids monopolistic behavior)
• Access terms have to be negotiated with the infrastructure owners
• Private initiative, under government regulation
• No h d
N shared ownership ,shared usage
hi h d

7. Open Infrastructure Examples
O f
OCAS
• Research centre for steel applications, based in Belgium
• Promotes R&D partnerships (Research)
• Joint venture between ArcelorMittal and the Flemish Region
• Innovative product design, smart materials selection, prototyping, etc.
• 40% state funded, 60% private funding
• Financing t b covered b services revenue & spin-offs
Fi i to be d by i i ff
• Recent spin-offs include Elytra (2006), XcelCoat (2007), and borit (2009)

8. Open Infrastructure Landscape
O f
3rd Party
3 dP t
trol
Cont
Private Ownership Shared
Ownership
O hi
Contr
rol
Private