We had a great meeting last week to kick off the sequence services Phase 2 effort. Thanks to everyone who participated. Some great questions were raised during the meeting, and I’m providing the answers here for those of you who may have missed the meeting. Use the comments to ask more questions and watch this space for answers.
What is the expectation for the presentation in September?
For those who participated in Phase 1, you’ll recognize the format. We expect a paper proposal along with a “pitch” presentation to be delivered via teleconference/webex.
The pilots will take more than $50K, but the Pistoia Alliance is only providing up to $50K in shared risk funding per pilot. What gives?
Our intention is not to fully fund any new business model for the delivery of sequence services but rather to provide seed funding and ideas/encouragement that will promote the development of a range of new business models. All groups therefore will be eligible to receive the same level of funding. We also expect that the cost of the work will vary between groups.
How many pilots will be funded?
This partly depends on how many companies submit proposals in Phase 2, but we expect to fund no more than five and no less than two pilots with the money we have raised.
What use cases are the top priorities?
The requirements are already graded in priority within the RFP, and we expect groups to present how they would deliver these initially along with options to broaden out the delivery to encompass new requirements. Our minimum requirements are therefore to build a system that provides
- A secure area to load data
- A way to manage that data (assign to project, assign users to roles & assign rights to roles)
- An analysis pipeline of the vendor’s choosing that best shows the ease of use and power of its proposed solution
If you want to discuss delivery options for the requirements, please get in touch.
What is the level of interest in this project from the Pistoia Alliance?
We have four companies in the core project who are providing funding, and we are continuing to engage with other interested parties. If you know of companies who might have an interest in this effort, direct them to our website or to me.
Who will be reviewing the RFP responses? Just the core team or a wider team from Pistoia?
The core team will have a significant say in reviewing the RFP and setting the broader direction of this effort as they are the ones funding the project. However, we have consulted with the wider Pistoia community and with others outside of the Pistoia Alliance to build the requirements, and we expect to continue doing that during Phase 2.
What happened to the Phase 1 pilots?
The Phase 1 pilots were intended to demonstrate the ability of vendors to provide the platform and security needed to provide access to sequence data as a service. You can find information on these pilots on the sequence services page of the Pistoia Alliance website (Phase 1 outputs in the sidebar). The public demonstrators were published in April 2011 and are still available for evaluation. They have also provided the foundation for Phase 1. None of these PoCs have been commercialised to date.
Can you clarify the priority of applications?
The applications are marked with M=must have and D=desirable in the RFP. For clarity the “must have” applications were rated as essential by more than one company within Pistoia.
Are these applications all available for open use in a commercial setting?
We believe so, but we have not checked all the licence details. We encourage Phase 2 participants to do so.
Will we get some standard data for assessment? Or at least guidance on data to choose?
Yes, we intend to provide some standard data.
How many users will pilots need to accommodate?
It is expected that there will be <10 users per company involved in assessing the pilots.
Can you say more about the security requirements expected for pilots?
There are two security elements that we expect pilots to address. First, security should be set not just at an organizational level, but at sub levels/roles within an organisation. This includes assigning users to roles and setting permissions to roles, etc. Second, collaboration security is considered an important aspect, and we’ll be evaluating how well the pilots enable users to work across organizational boundaries.
How large will the data volumes be?
Pilots should be able to work with 10-100 Tb.
What indication of response is needed before Sept?
We have no formal requirements for this, though we assume that those interested in submitting proposals will be engaging with us and asking questions during the next few weeks.
What will happen at the end of Phase 2?
From our perspective, Phase 2 will end in April 2012 with all participating vendors being invited to a Pistoia conference to present their systems to the wider Pistoia Alliance community. At this stage commercial discussions between individual service vendors & service consumers can start, but these would be private commercial deals occurring outside of the scope of the Pistoia Alliance.
What further communication can we expect?
Subscribe to this blog; we’ll be posting alerts here to keep everyone updated. Also be sure to check the Pistoia Alliance website, specifically the sequence services page. We will also post updates to the sequence services Basecamp page (request access by emailing sequenceservices@pistoiaalliance.org).
How do we ask further questions?
Feel free to comment to this post and we’ll answer questions there. Additionally, you can send emails to sequenceservices@pistoiaalliance.org.