PART 1 – The Empirical Picture
5.7 Extending use
In seeking out new users, an essential part of becoming a sustainable production quality e-infrastructure, most projects employ several measures, though this does not have highest priority in all the investigated cases. Among these measures, the most common are (see Table 5-13):
• Tutorials and training
• Targeted communication to potentially interested organizations and individuals
• Presentations at conferences, workshops, events
• Word of mouth and social networking
Some projects invest considerable resources and try to increase their understanding of the user communities by cultivating relationships and developing solutions which particularly address their needs, like OSG and TeraGrid. Over the course of years these projects have realized that the recruitment of new users is something that necessarily happens once the technology is developed and made available to the communities, but that more efforts than merely raising awareness and training are needed.
At first sight it may seem astonishing that the recruitment of new users is not a top priority for all projects(see Table 5-13). There are different reasons for some cases not to invest too much effort into recruiting users:
• Projects may follow a sequential approach of technology development, innovation and diffusion. Then, being in an early phase of technology development with a primary focus on building, testing and improving the e-infrastructure, they postpone involvement of a broader set of users to later phases. NVO and D4Science seem to be cases which apply this strategy currently.
• Others, like CineGrid, do not want to serve a broader user community, but see their main purpose as technological innovators doing proof of concepts and demonstrations which may or may not be taken up at some later point in time by others.
• A third group of projects with few efforts in enlarging their user base are those which have low prospects of being continued in the future.
Table 5-13: User recruitment
Measures Importance Results
C3-Grid
1. User-meetings with organizations from outside the consortium
2. Tutorials
3. Visits to potentially interested organizations 4. Conference presentations
High
Moderate for 1 and 2, as large effort for potential users
CineGrid
No dedicated activities, outreach activities, interest raised through presentations, demonstrations and performances at various events
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Measures Importance Results
stage, but user recruitment is recognized as a high priority
D4science
1. Targeted recruitment and training by the project team and mediators
2. Workshops and conferences
Low N/A
DARIAH No activities as yet, project is at an early stage N/A N/A
DEISA
1. Europe-wide calls for proposals 2. Documentation
3. Training
4. Centralized help desk
N/A N/A
DRIVER
1. Raising awareness at international events 2. Summer school for repository managers 3. DRIVER summits
3. Workshops, decision maker days;
4. Customized “Gridification weeks”
5. Conference presentations 6. Local promotion by members
High
1. New users appear as they are socialized into major user fields (as HEP)
2. Presentations of the infrastructure to potential major user communities
3. Collaborations with other organizations (e.g.
DANTE, NRENs) to reach new users 4. Training sessions for potential users 5. Participates heavily in EC project dissemination and concertation activities
Medium
EGEE is “the” European Grid brand and most potential users turn to it; success of
recruitment activities is hard to assess.
ETSF
1. Calls for proposals 2. Training events 3. Manuals and tutorials 4. Users’ Newsletter
1. Summer training workshops
2. Inclusion in teaching at member organiz-ations
3. Social networks of members 4. Funding of small research projects
Low in the past, high in the future
N/A
OGF
1. Involved groups actively solicit adoption in their communities
2. Targeted surveys on user requirements 3. Inviting “lead users”
Low, but
1. “Engagement team” to involve new users 2. User identification: workshops, “Grid schools”, announcements at domain specific conferences, “cold” email correspondences or telephone calls
3. Cultivating relationships to understand the
High Good, large and growing number of users
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Measures Importance Results
particulars of users’ research and technological environments and tailor suitable solutions 4. Regular meetings between OSG managers and major user communities
5. Social networks Swedish
Nat. Data Service
Training and support offered (particularly for
deposit of data) Medium Good, users are
successfully recruited
Project benefits may be revived
TeraGrid
1. Traditional publicity mechanisms (website, press releases, announcements)
2. Dedicated training events
3. Science Gateways: community-specific portals
4. Campus Champions
High Good, large and growing number of users
Most projects state specific catalysts and barriers which are influential – according to their knowledge and experience – in the adoption process (see Table 5-14). As to be expected, the strongest drivers towards adoption are access to data, computing power and other resources;
nearly every project mentions one or more of these motivations. Becoming involved with other people with particular expertise and knowledge and the support to collaboration were also mentioned as influential in several cases.
Among the barriers we find a notable variety. A lack of knowledge about the technology – combined with insufficient time to benefit from training and support activities – and different facets of the immaturity of the technologies are named most often across the board. To our surprise, funding problems are mentioned only in relatively few cases (CineGrid, EELA-2, DARIAH), of which the majority address constituencies in the social sciences and arts &
humanities. This may indicate that these domains still encounter problems in justifying their e-infrastructure involvement and setting up a sustainable funding of their efforts.
Table 5-14: Catalysts and barriers of adoption
Catalysts Barriers
C3-Grid Access to data from different sources and of different types
1. Grid-specific knowledge missing 2. Inclination to computational research missing
CineGrid
1. Counterpart for networking experiments, 2. Exchange of know-how with a global community of excellence,
3. Reducing effort and costs of transmitting audio/video data
4. Forward-looking developments in the area of distributed content management and retrieval 5. General trends towards scientific
visualization, digital cinema
1. Demanding high-speed fibre-network connections
2. Scepticism towards new technologies 3. Lack of expert knowledge
4. Funding
CLARIN
1. Access to data
2. Access to software to analyze data 3. Potential collaboration
1. (Potential) technological barriers 2. (Potential) Lack of funding D4science Obtaining access to heterogeneous data in a
Virtual Research Environment
1. Complex process of use involving mediators to translate users’ demands
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Catalysts Barriers
into infrastructure services
2. Production quality of infrastructure is very recent
DARIAH Access to data
1. (Potential) Lack of funding 2. (Potential) Lack of computational, technological knowledge
DEISA Proposed projects have a strong need for
supercomputing resources None mentioned.
DRIVER N/A N/A
EELA-2
1. Scarcity of computational resources 2. Strong interest in international scientific collaboration
1. Scarcity of funds
2. Low maturity of Grid technology 3. Limited time for learning Grid use 4. Application programming is not supported
EGEE 1. Well known European Grid brand
2. EGEE use is standard in some fields (like HEP)
1. Data protection needs of users from the industry can’t be guaranteed 2. Set-up and use of middleware are complex and require considerable understanding
ETSF Scientific interest N/A
GÉANT N/A N/A
MediGrid N/A N/A
NVO
1. Growing importance of multi-wavelength astronomy
2. Useful tools, such as a “name resolver” for celestial objects
1. Time investment to learn and utilize e-Infrastructure designs & technologies 2. Not familiar with Grid use and limited time for learning
OGF
1. Monopoly status of specifications in the e-Infrastructure space
2. Availably of existing distributed infrastructures based on OGF standards
1. Complexity: some standards are lengthy and difficult to implement 2. Availability of alternatives, e.g.
virtualization and cloud computing
OSG
1. Personal interest 2. Access to experts
3. Access to distributed high-end computational and data resources
2. Facilitation of collaborative research Sensitive data Swiss
BioGrid Small project easy to manage Project finished, partly no follow-up because of lack of infrastructure
TeraGrid Need for high-end computational, data or data visualization resources
1. System not delivery oriented and at times unreliable
2. Long waiting times and latency 3. Technical design problems (cumbersome interfaces, software, unstable system)