BioExcel Deliverable 5.1 - Initial Business Plan

This document describes scenarios toward sustainability for BioExcel. The described scenarios will be continuously refined during the coming months based on the progress made with our user community. This document should in its current stage thus not be read as a final plan, but rather as a guidance towards development of our final business plan.

The first section presents the vision and mission statements that reflect the shared view of the partners at this early stage in the project. Closely tied into these statements are the success goals presented in the second section. These success goals generate our value proposition and serve as a baseline for our sustainability objectives.

Section three gives a brief overview of the HPC ecosystem. About one-fifth of the European HPC server revenues are related to biosciences, which is the second largest technical segment right after computer-aided engineering. Revenue streams from HPC server revenues in Europe are predicted to grow with 6.9% annually, whereas HPC software revenues are predicted to grow with 7.2% annually until 2018.

Section four presents BioExcel’s value proposition to different stakeholders in the biomolecular and HPC ecosystem. The key value that we provide is the enhancement of efficiency, scalability and usability of open-source software important to the biomolecular community. In addition, we will provide free support, including free training to non-profit users. These support offerings are accompanied by premium service offerings to paying users. Annual prices for access to a premium web portal with help desk are suggested to be €120 for non-profit users and €700 for industrial users. In addition, the intention is to provide different consultancy services, which are presumed to be most relevant to industrial users.

Section five then presents a suitable governance structure that is driven by user needs, and gives a first hint on what needs to be considered when choosing a legal vessel.

In section six, three different scale cost scenarios are compared. The common aspect of the scenarios is that revenue streams from our premium service offering allow reduction of our funding rate by partially covering costs of center operation and free user support.

Section seven concludes this business plan with sustainability objectives that support our development towards achieving sustainability.