Counting the Cost of FIRE

Sustaining European experimental facilities for Future Internet research is a significant challenge for testbed providers, funding bodies, and customers who depend on their long-term availability. To date, sustainability plans for experimental facilities have been dominated by abstract notions of business value and unclear business models. We argue that this fails to recognise that cost accountability is the critical element necessary to drive efficiency, irrespective of whether revenue is provided from public or commercial sources. Only through cost accountability can facilities make operational management decisions that are aligned with performance metrics and assess the financial viability of business plans. In this paper we demonstrate how cost modelling and usage accounting can be used to support operational and sustainability decisions for a federated cloud experimentation facility.