IIt is conceivable that public sponsors more and more demand to acquire IT infrastructure required for research projects in the field of life sciences from a service provider. Likewise for a sustainable organization of the grid infrastructure an option for economical utilization needs to be developed. In this context it is necessary to provide low-threshold access to the grid infrastructure for research institutes and industry.
Within
D-Grid these goals will be tackled through Services@MediGRID as an advancement
of MediGRID. Thus vertical services for monitoring, accounting, and billing will
offer providers for grid infrastructure as well as providers for grid services
the possibility to bill supplied services. Services@MediGRID will develop the
necessary basis for the MediGRID community. The horizontal and enduring
integration of the vertical services for monitoring, accounting, and billing is
closely coordinated with the D-Grid Integration Project (DGI).
Services@MediGRID aims at the implementation
of sustainable business models to create an economically stable basis for
existing MediGRID services and grid infrastructure. Relevant methods concerning
monitoring, accounting, and billing must fulfill the high security demands within
the scope of life sciences. Privacy regulations in medical research and health
care specify highest demands concerning security, confidentiality, and availability
of the data to be processed. Also the different requirements of academic and
industrial grid customers have to be considered in order to establish the sustainable
concept.
This applies to technical specifications and realization, as well as to transparent charge of usage of the grid infrastructure while the confidentiality of the data can still be guaranteed. Charging of services presumes billing metrics and service conditions, both reasonable and adjusted to the requirements of customers and providers. This implies a basis for a sustainable positioning of the platform and the services provided by MediGRID. Professional academic and industrial grid service providers offer grid services on commercial principals or integrate grid services of other grid service providers into their own product portfolio allowing themselves to provide these to their own customers. Services@MediGRID offers coaching by grid specialists to assist the embedded academic and industrial partners from the field of life sciences in using grid technology.
The final result will be a market for grid
based services in the domain of life sciences.