1. Sustainability
Dave Roberts, Vince Smith & Simon Rycroft

2. Components of sustainability
Financial:
hardware (running the VM, licences, etc)
Development (salary costs for bug-fixing,
minor upgrades, user help)
Confidence:
internal - institutional relevance;
external - user perception, commitment,
stability, longevity, exit strategy
Marketing:
growing the user base;
visibility;
contributing to the landscape
Agility:
changing standards;
volatile user requirements;
adaptability.

3. Finance
Hardware: estimated annual cost ~€1000
Share of a virtual machine, licenses, applying patches
Warmware: 1 FTE, ~€100k
1 FTE, ~€75k
Developer: bug fixing, minor upgrades, data compatibility
User support, issues queue management, user training
1 FTE, ~€150k (part)
Project leadership and management, grant writing,
in-house integration, project promotion
and, most importantly, a champion ...

4. Confidence
Embedded in Institutional planning
Service Level Description
How safe are my data?
Will I get credit for my
work?
Data ownership
and licensing

5. 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Number of Citations Papers mentioning a Scratchpad Site
0
5
10
15
20
25
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Number of Citations Papers mentioning the Scratchpad Project
Sites
Users
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Active Users
Sites
Users
ViBRANT Scratchpads 2
20
50
100
200
300
400
500
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
8000
10000
Marketing

6. Timetomodel
alllifeonEarth
To help transform our understanding of the biosphere, ecologists — like climate
scientists — should simulate whole ecosystems, argue Drew Purves and colleagues.
YILU/VIEWSTOCK/CORBIS
AhyenasurveysaflockofflamingosinSouthAfrica.
Agility
Changing landscape
Responsive to
user feedback
Genomic
Observatories
Moorea Biocode Project