XSEDE Value Added, Cost Avoidance, and Return on Investment

Abstract

In science and engineering discovery often lags years behind research, whose full potential may not be known for decades. Large research facilities struggle to quantify a return on the substantial federal investments that fund their often-broad scopes of operations. This paper presents a three-part methodology that shows the value from the investment in XSEDE: 1) a qualitative examination of the primary areas where XSEDE adds value to the open research community, 2) a “thought model” examining the savings realized by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the centralization and coordination XSEDE provides, and 3) an assessment of the value provided to Service Providers in the XSEDE ecosystem. XSEDE adds significantly to the US research community because it functions as a unified interface to the XD ecosystem and because of its scale. We cannot yet put a figure on this value but according to anecdotal evidence it is significant – perhaps greater than the entire cost of XSEDE over five years. We can qualitatively assess return on investment (ROI) for XSEDE’s delivery of essential core functions for a national advanced cyberinfrastructure center. A partly quantitative, partly qualitative analysis suggests ROI for XSEDE’s delivery of essential core functions to the nation is greater than 1.0. Qualitative arguments considering anecdotal evidence of XSEDE’s value added suggest XSEDE has an ROI of greater than 1.0 in terms of return to the nation on the NSF investment in XSEDE.