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The present PRACE funding model is based on two strands. The first is a flat cash contribution that all members pay for the sustainability of the organization in terms of basic office operations (like office space, staff wages, general accounting and taxes). The second is an in-kind contribution which is defined in terms of computing resources and associated services. The amount of this in-kind contribution has been agreed to be 100M€ per Hosting Member for the initial period of five years. This model is known as the Cycles model and the operation is based on the provision of computing hours by the Hosting Members. An important aspect to take into account for any future funding model is the long term perspective for the sustainability of PRACE. Members must discuss and decide upon the evolution of the funding model that will be put in place and implement it, prior to the end date of the initial period in April 2015. Therefore, this is an urgent action for PRACE AISBL and the PRACE Office to consider. For an analysis of what the PRACE funding model should be, it is important to explore what other existing research infrastructures have implemented in terms of models and practices and what could be the pros and cons for PRACE. Clearly all the examples studied show different characteristics and solutions for the structure of the financial contributions and the enforcement of the juste retour principle. The structure of the financial contributions is generally based on two approaches: GDP Share of usage of the resources (pay per use) Before undertaking analysis of the potential funding models, it was essential to establish some principles that should be present in any funding model that could be used for PRACE in the future. The principles can be seen as the strategic guidelines to take into consideration for the selection of a suitable model for providing a route towards long-term financial stability and sustainability. Nine principles have been established (see section 3.1): Meeting the mission of PRACE Legality Sustainability Fairness to partners within PRACE Transparency Meeting user needs Flexibility Acceptability to the AISBL Ability to bring to a close The current funding model is analysed within the context of these principles in order to assess the merit in the current arrangement. The analysis has been then performed in three different scenarios that might be considered options for PRACE evolution: Central Organisation - One system Central Organisation - Many systems Loosely coupled distributed organisation A summary table is presented at the end of the document where the characteristics of the above options are compared to provide a global overview.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are of fundamental value for all organisations that provide services to users. SLAs record a common understanding about services, priorities, responsibilities, guarantees, and warranties of the services provided. This is very important not only for the organisations but also for the users to allow them to know the type of services (level of service) they can expect from the provider and which are the conditions for provision of these services, i.e. availability, serviceability, performance, operation, or any other characteristics of the service. Within the PRACE AISBL context the main aim is establishing a service-oriented utility infrastructure for users that allows on demand provisioning and delivery of access services in a flexible way so that SLAs can serve as key enabler to support users management across different perspectives and domains between research and industry. The SLAs definition methodology follows the well-established industry standard in the field of information technology management where there are several sets of best practices and standards which allow organisations to better understand, design and maintain the processes necessary for providing IT services. Some of the most important ones are the ISO/IEC 20000 International Service Management Standard. This standard supports several IT service management approaches, including the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and components of Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT). Further analysis of the results obtained in the PRACE projects and the best practices described in the above documents for the specific case of PRACE AISBL, taking into account its mission of providing high-end computing resources to European researchers from academic institutions and from industry, resulted in the definition of a Service Catalogue for PRACE AISBL and the need to produce two types of service level agreements: Operational Level Agreement (OLA) covering a service level agreement between each computer centre that contributes resources to PRACE AISBL and PRACE AISBL, called Contributors Agreement. This OLA should be common to all computer centres and cover the services defined in the PRACE Service Catalogue. User Agreement between each computer centre of the Hosting Members (HMs) contributing resources to PRACE AISBL and the users. This agreement should describe the standard average level of service the users may expect from the computer centres as well as the duties and responsibilities of the users for using the PRACE AISBL resources. The next step is to take into account the following specific characteristics of the PRACE AISBL organisation for deciding on the terms of reference of these agreements: implications of the organisation model of PRACE AISBL; identification of the main stakeholders; experience of the members of PRACE AISBL in their own countries with special attention being given to similar SLAs applied in the countries of the HMs; implications of the geographic distribution of PRACE AISBL resources. The main result of these efforts is a proposal illustrating the main elements to be considered or adapted for drafting the Contributors Agreement and the User Agreement. These proposals can serve as a reference framework to be used by PRACE AISBL to produce the actual versions of these agreements.