DILIGENT Deliverable No D4.3.3a: "Market Watch"

Andrade P, Castelli D, Debald S, Fankhauser P, Guidetti V, Manieri A, Faggian Marque R, Niederee C, Nikel M, Volterrani S

Digital libraries  Grid  utility computing  e-Science  eu-ist 

The objective of this Market Watch report is to communicate findings of the monitoring regarding the evolution of the Digital Library (DL) and Grid markets, to update the project on current trends (technological as well as marketwise), related products, and emerging competitors. In addition, this report will support the definition and refinement of the business model for DILIGENT which will be carried out in D4.3.4a "Preliminary Business Plan". The DILIGENT project targets the development of a DL infrastructure testbed which facilitates knowledge sharing and remote co-operation in e-Science. The DILIGENT infrastructure will support the on-demand creation of a new generation of DL which will be built by exploiting a given set of shared resources maintained by the infrastructure itself. These shared resources, which may be processing power, storage, instruments, data or applications, will be managed dynamically and their allocation will be a transparent process. The DILIGENT solution is a framework for the dynamic on-demand creation of DL for e-Science communities and organizations based on a Grid infrastructure. In this vision DILIGENT is creating a new value chain in the DL business models. The framework allows Virtual Research Organisations (VRO) to integrate archives and other services required to meet VRO needs. The idea to bring together Grid and DL technologies will enhance not only these technologies per se, but also define systematic ways of how to develop next generation information networks on the basis of Grid technologies, which can be applied and adapted to other domains. This Market Watch report is designed to be an on-going deliverables that will be improved in two distinct iterations during the project lifetime. This first edition of the report focuses on a revision of the market analysis carried out in D4.3.1 "Market and Technology Trends Analysis". Due to the updating character of this report it will structurally be close to D4.3.1. In addition to an update of the DL domain as described previously, a direct functional comparison of existing DL and repository solutions is carried out. Furthermore, for the first time, this report includes the investigation of existing best practices in the user communities of DILIGENT and the disruptive potential of expected DILIGENT results through analysis of the possible impact on the user communities. In addition to this executive summary (Chapter 1), this document contains eight chapters that carry out the analysis as described above and will give input to the definition of the DILIGENT business plan. An initial chapter (Chapter 2) gives a short description of the DILIGENT project and introduces our analysis methodology. Chapter 3 updates the analysis of the functional perspective focussing on Digital Library and Scientific Repositories domains. A case-based direct functional comparison of well established applications from the different domains is carried out. In addition, in the context of scientific repositories, recent studies which try to find a new model for scientific publication are discussed. Chapter 4 introduces the user communities' point of view in the analysis of the expected impact of DILIGENT. As an initial step of this investigation the representatives of the user communities which are also partners in DILIGENT have been interviewed on their present best practices and anticipated impact of the DILIGENT results. Chapter 5 gives an update of the grid as the primary enabling technology for DILIGENT, including an overview of the grid market and current standardisation trends. Particular attention is given to the intensifying collaboration between DILIGENT and EGEE. Emerging scenarios in digital content management are described in Chapter 6. These trends are particularly important to DILIGENT as the digital content market will be the main reference market for distributing or using the DILIGENT results. Chapter 7 reassesses internal and external factors which are critical to the success of DILIGENT. This revision includes an update of the SWOT analysis. Finally, chapter (Chapter 8) summarizes the results and drawn conclusions. Appendices are contained in Chapter 9.