Sigma2 business strategy

The Sigma2 Board of Directors approved this strategy in 2018. It applies for the period from 2019 onwards.

Vision

Our vision is to maximise the impact and return of scientific research by providing a sustainable, predictable and cost-efficient e-infrastructure.

Bilde

Key strategic areas

Provide advance compute and data services addressing users`needs.

How

• Operate and develop a critical national e-infrastructure offering
  
  
  • Compute services
    
    
  • Data services (storage and data management)
    
    
  • Advanced User Support
    
    
  • Training
    
    
  • Support services
    
    
• Be user-driven by being near users and survey needs
  
  
• Be a strategic partner to the universities
  
  
• Bring in new and proven technologies into the e-infrastructure to enable wider user

Success factors:

• Adequate funding
  
• Right competencies
  
• Active user participation
  
• Leadership involvement

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Facilitator for international research services, cloud-based resources and common components

How:

• Lead and coordinate participation in international cooperation for e-infrastructure.
  
  
• Enable access to special/extra resources and building of own competencies through participation in international e-infrastructures.
  
  
• Foster Open Science and international research collaborations through participation in Nordic and European initiatives with a priority on the Nordics.
  
  
• Ensure services follow FAIR principles.
  
  
• Provide researchers with easy access to cloud-based services and tools.
  
  
• Integration of the e-infrastructure with other cloud services, both commercial and sector-internal, to enable hybrid and elastic infrastructure.
  

Success factors:

• Availability of resources
  
• Govt. participation and policies
  
• Research access to public data

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Combine Sigma2 infrastructure with the capabilities and competencies of partner institutions to achieve cost-efficient research services

How:

• Centralise infrastructure and free up resources from operations to lower costs and expand high-level support.
  
  
• Leverage the distributed nature of NRIS to be near researchers.
  
  
• Combine technical expertise and understanding of the research process and research data cycle to create relevant and high-quality e-infrastructure.
  
  
• Offer underlying storage infrastructure for strategic research data services.
  
  
• Contribute compute resources and storage for research near the public sector.
  
  
• Be an active player in the HE&R and research-near public sector facilitating partnerships and collaboration to the benefit of researchers and the partner institutions.
  

Success factors:

• NRIS co-ownership and participation
  
• Shifting weight from hardware to service and support