#  Executive summary

The data generated in the SWITCH project can be roughly classified into two
main groups: 1) documentation including internal documents (design documents,
quality reports or technical reports), deliverables, multimedia content and
other documents; and 2) technical solutions, including ontologies, knowledge
base instance data, time series obtained by monitoring, and software source
code. All data and metadata generated will be compliant to industries standard
or certain initiatives. Documentation will be stored on internal shared cloud
storage (currently, Google drive is used), while technical solutions will be
available through knowledge base, web page or public open source repositories
(currently, Github is being considered). All the data will be licensed –
documents will include Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license and SWITCH
technical solutions will be protected under Apache v2.0 license. The SWITCH
technical solutions do not include pilot applications used to demonstrate
project results. These are subject to their individual licensing which is
further regulated in the SWITCH consortium agreement. During the project life-
time, project partner BEIA will curate all datasets except for developed
software for which project partner WT will be responsible. After the end of
the project all the data will be archived and preserved for 5 years by the
Project coordinator, UvA. Further attempts will be made to store information
for longer periods through standardization and by joining the Open Research
Data Pilot. The Data Management Plan is a living document, which will evolve
through the lifespan of the project. Future updates will be agreed upon with
the partners.

#  Introduction

##  Objectives

The SWITCH Data Management Plan is based on the “Guidelines for Data
Management in Horizon 2020” provided by the European Commission. The objective
of the SWITCH Data Management Plan is to answer the following questions:

  * What types of data will the project generate/collect? 

  

  * What standards will be used for data and metadata? 

  

  * How will this data be exploited and/or shared/made accessible for verification and reuse? 

  

  * How will this data be curated and preserved? 

  

  * Who are the responsible partners for curating these data and metadata? 

  

##  Related tasks

The SWITCH Data Management Plan (D2.2) relates to all work packages, as each
work package will generate some kind of data. Project partner UL is organising
this activity, while all the partners are contributing. D2.2 is part of WP2:
SWITCH Interactive Development Environment (SIDE). D2.2 directly relates to
Task 2.3: Data management plan and the SWITCH knowledge base.

#  A Data Management Plan for SWITCH

##  Background information

The overall objective of the SWITCH project is to address the entire life-
cycle of time-critical, self-adaptive Cloud applications by developing new
middleware, front-end tools and services to enable users to specify their
time-critical requirements for an application interactively using a direct
manipulation user interface, deploy their applications and adapt the
infrastructure to changing requirements either automatically (using the
specified requirements) or by human intervention, if desired.

During the projects lifetime many different sets of data will be generated,
including documents, source code, metadata and ontologies. Thus appropriate
data management methodologies and procedures should be introduced. The SWITCH
Data Management Plan will ensure that all data that the project generates will
meet certain standards, will be stored appropriately, allowing access to
authorised parties, and will be accessible and available after the project
ends.

We anticipate that the results of the SWITCH project will be of great interest
to different organisations and individuals. This initial version of the Data
Management Plan takes this into consideration as follows:

  1. Software industry and individual software engineers: SWITCH will generate data and metadata related to Cloud application monitoring, flexibility and efficiency of various middleware solutions in given context, infrastructure topology, Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics, etc., which may be of interest to software engineering companies. For example, software companies that are dealing with video streaming, teleconferencing or sensor based Cloud applications. 

  

  2. Consultancy companies: various research papers produced by the SWITCH project as well as other data and metadata generated by the project may be of interest to consultancy companies. Such companies might need to better understand the future 

  

  

of the Cloud, and how time-critical applications will be designed, deployed
and managed in federated Clouds. This in turn may contribute to higher quality
of their provided services.

  3. Cloud service providers: data centres that provide Service level agreements (SLAs) for critical services might deploy SWITCH as Software as a Service (SaaS); the SLAs specified by the SWITCH project as part of DRIP (WP3) may be appreciated by Cloud service providers that would like to provide guaranteed Quality of Service related to the networking part to their customers. 

  

  4. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs: enterprises that operate time critical services, which are built, deployed or controlled using SWITCH, or that develop new applications with time critical requirements. In all these cases, the metadata and data generated by the SWITCH project could prove useful. 

  

  5. Service consumers: consumers will want to understand the business model and technologies in developing, deploying and operating time critical applications in Clouds. 

  

  6. Research and education organizations, such as universities: SWITCH data and metadata could be used in the education/training purpose (e.g. UL has a 3  rd  degree Bologna course in “Development of Distributed Engineering Applications”), or by administrators of universities’ computing centres, or other research-oriented infrastructures, such as the European Grid Initiative (EGI). 

  

  7. Time critical application specialists in specific domains: from the analysis of the use cases, SWITCH data and metadata could be useful to a wide collection of domains which require time critical services in collaborative business environments, video & entertainment, disaster warning and others. 

  

  8. Non-specialists: Currently the datasets that will be produced during the project will not offer significant value to non-specialists, as the datasets will not be adjusted for their use. If significant interest is shown in the datasets by non-specialist groups, further effort will be made to accommodate their needs. 

  

  9. Regulatory bodies, public administrations, and investors: the documents or publications generated by SWITCH will provide input for regulatory bodies and public administrations to made decisions on setting regulations in specific application domains, such as disaster early warning, or to understand the technical details when investing in companies related to time critical cloud applications. 

  

  

All parties interested in available data will be permitted access to data of
their interest in accordance with the definitions in this document. This will
foster the impact of the project and allow more people to benefit from project
outcomes.

##  Dataset description

The main datasets generated by the SWITCH project are summarized in Table 3-1.
**Table 3-1: Dataset description**  
  
<table>  
<tr>  
<th>

**Output**

</th>  
<th>

**Tag**

</th>  
<th>

**Instances**

</th>  
<th>

**Origin**

</th> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Documentation

</td>  
<td>

</td>  
<td>

</td>  
<td>

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Information about partners

</td>  
<td>

INF

</td>  
<td>

• Documents

</td>  
<td>

Produced during the project.

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Deliverables

</td>  
<td>

D

</td>  
<td>

• Documents

</td>  
<td>

Produced during the project.

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Multimedia

</td>  
<td>

MM

</td>  
<td>

  * Video 

  

  * Sound 

  

  * Pictures 

  

</td>  
<td>

Produced during the project for the means of dissemination and exploitation.

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Other documents

</td>  
<td>

OD

</td>  
<td>

  * Documents 

  

  * Spreadsheets 

  

  * Presentations 

  

  * Internal documents (design docs, quality reports, or technical reports) 

  

</td>  
<td>

Produced during the project for the means of project

coordination, dissemination and exploitation.

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Research papers

</td>  
<td>

RP

</td>  
<td>

• Documents

</td>  
<td>

Produced during the project as a result of a research work.

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Technical solutions

</td>  
<td>

</td>  
<td>

</td>  
<td>

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Ontologies

</td>  
<td>

ONT

</td>  
<td>

  * QoS ontologies 

  

  * QoE ontologies 

  

  * Monitoring ontologies 

  

  * Elasticity ontologies 

  

</td>  
<td>

Produced as a result of the work during the project.

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Knowledge base instance data

</td>  
<td>

KBI

</td>  
<td>

• RDF

</td>  
<td>

Produced as a result of the work during the project.

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Time series obtained by monitoring

</td>  
<td>

TSM

</td>  
<td>

• Database files

</td>  
<td>

Produced as a result of the work during the project.

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Software source code

(developed in the project)  1

</td>  
<td>

SSC

</td>  
<td>

• Source code files

</td>  
<td>

Produced as a result of the work during the project.

</td> </tr> </table>

##  Data and Metadata Standards

To ensure the widest possible use the data will be stored in widely adopted
file formats and will be compliant to industry standards or initiatives like
RDA  2  , ISO  3  , OGF  4  , OMG  5  , OASIS  6  , IETF  7  , IEEE  8  and
W3C  9  . Metadata will use Dublin Core  10  standard set where possible. This
will lead to an open solution for future data access and harmonisation
enabling interoperability to allow data exchange between researchers,
organisations and other interested parties.

##  Policies for Access and Storage

The datasets have different levels of access and different means of storage
described in the Table 3-2. Datasets, that are publicly available, will be
uniquely identifiable and discoverable by using a standard identification
mechanism, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Moreover software and
data produced will be stored and equipped with the context necessary to
reproduce findings in the project, making datasets intelligible and
assessable. This way we will ensure that all parties that have the ambition to
exploit and/or review project results will have the proper means to find
relevant information and will be equipped with minimal necessary software,
data, and information to reproduce these results and findings.

**Table 3-2: Policies for access and storage**  
  
<table>  
<tr>  
<th>

**Tag**

</th>  
<th>

**Storage**

</th>  
<th>

**Access**

</th> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Documentation

</td>  
<td>

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

INF

</td>  
<td>

Shared cloud storage  11

</td>  
<td>

Restricted

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

D

</td>  
<td>

Shared cloud storage

</td>  
<td>

Restricted

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

MM

</td>  
<td>

Shared cloud storage

</td>  
<td>

Publicly available

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

OD

</td>  
<td>

Shared cloud storage

</td>  
<td>

Publicly available

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

RP

</td>  
<td>

Shared cloud storage

</td>  
<td>

Publicly available

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

Technical solutions

</td>  
<td>

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

ONT

</td>  
<td>

Knowledge base

</td>  
<td>

Publicly available

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

KBM

</td>  
<td>

Knowledge base

</td>  
<td>

Publicly available

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

TSM

</td>  
<td>

Knowledge base

</td>  
<td>

Publicly available

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

SSC

</td>  
<td>

Public open source repository  12

</td>  
<td>

Publicly available

</td> </tr> </table>

  2. Research Data Alliance www.rd-alliance.org/ 

  

  3. International Organisation for Standardisation, www.iso.org 

  

  4. Open Grid Forum, www.ogf.org 

  

  5. Object management group, www.omg.org 

  

  6. Advanced Open Standards for the Information Society, www.oasis-open.org 

  

  7. International engineering task force, www.ietf.org 

  

  8. IEEE, www.ieee.org 

  

  9. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) www.w3.org 

  

  10. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative http://dublincore.org 

  

  11. Currently, GoogleDrive is used as shared cloud storage among partners.  12  Github will be used. 

  

  

##  Policies for re-use, distribution

Access to databases and associated software tools generated under the project
will be available under the Apache v2.0  2  license. Such access will be
provided using web-based applications, as appropriate.

Similarly, the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)  3  licence will be used
for all publicly available documents. Licensees may copy, distribute, display
and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give
the author or licensor credit.

##  Plans for Archiving and Preservation

###  Short term

During the project’s lifetime project partner BEIA will take care of data
storage and employ appropriate preservation techniques; project partner WT
will curate the software produced by the SWITCH project. All partners will
contribute their prepared data sets. After the projects conclusion all the
data will be archived and maintained on an internally accessible server and
made available on request at no charge to the user.

###  Long term

After the conclusion of the project partner UvA will curate the data
originally curated both by partner WT and partner BEIA along with all other
data needed for it to be useful. UvA will store this data for 5 years after
the end of the project including managing the webpage, where datasets, papers,
software, and other data will be made available to general public. Further
efforts will be made to preserve data after that period, such as joining the
Open Research Data Pilot. The sustainability of the project results, such as
software and ontology, will also be achieved by nurturing open source
communities of developers and users, and by industrial exploitation after the
project.

###  Standardization

Standards will be used, aiming to make usage of the data as wide and
interoperable as possible while ensuring that the archiving and preservation
of the dataset is made possible beyond the project lifetime. Activities
related to uptake and advancement of standards will be of benefit to the
project and will be led by the Scientific Coordinator. The goal is to strongly
support the dissemination and upgrading of project results, widen the
exploitation potential of project output, and provide the project with access
to a large pool of external expertise. Participating in standardization
processes may bring to the project higher international recognition and new
opportunities for collaboration.

Specific target standardization bodies will be identified. The initial list
will include RDA, OGF, OMG, OASIS, IETF, IEEE and W3C. The initial list can be
refined depending on project achievements to also include other
standardization organisations. Special attention shall be given to Semantic
Web related standards and proposals for standards.

Influence on the different standardization activities depends on: (a) high
quality technical work; and (b) adequate participation of Consortium partners
within the standardization committees. The project will contribute to the
European and worldwide standardization bodies in order to ensure and increase
Europe’s participation and contribution to the international standardization
processes, today largely dominated by countries from other continents. The
Innovation and exploitation Coordinator (IEC) will be in charge to monitor and
detect possible important developments that should be taken into account by
the Consortium, as well as possible technical contributions to standards from
the project.

#  Abbreviations

CC BY – Creative Commons Attribution License

DOI – Digital Object Identifier

DRIP – Dynamic Real-time Infrastructure Planner

EGI – European Grid Initiative

IEC – Innovation and exploitation Coordinator

IEEE – Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers

IETF – International Engineering Task Force

ISO – International Organisation for Standardization

OASIS – Advanced Open Standards for the Information Society

OGF – Open Grid Forum

OMG – Object Management Group RDA – Research Data Alliance

SaaS – Software as a Service

SIDE – SWITCH Interactive Development Environment

SLA – Service License Agreement

SME – Small and medium-sized enterprise W3C – World Wide Web Consortium