Cloud4Research services are based on the principle that the researcher pays for the services that they use in the cloud (but see the note on base financing below). This payment is performed from a budget that the researcher has access to. Payment is administratively handled using internal TU Delft processes, so apart from assuring access to the budget, no additional administration is required.

Financial requirements

During the intake meeting, the researcher is asked to supply a budget-code for billing purposes. The Cloud4Research team will then validate the code with the budget-holder, after which monthly billing will take place.

In order to protect the researcher and TU Delft from excessive bills a number of financial thresholds are discussed and recorded during the intake meeting:

base financing: This is the amount that Cloud4Research will finance up-front for the researcher. This means that as long as the researcher does not accrue costs higher than this amount, no billing will take place. The height of the base financing will be discussed during the intake meeting and is dependent, among other things, on the remaining budget of the Cloud4Research project

expected spend: This is the amount that the researcher expects to spend (annually) in their use of the Cloud4Research services. Budget guards will be set up so as to notify the researcher in case the expected spend is approached or exceeded during the year.

hard limit: This is the amount at which action will be taken to stop spending on the account. This encompasses first of course contacting the researcher, but in case this fails, preventative action will be taken by the Cloud4Research team. This will involve stopping and/or deleting cloud-resources used by the account. This limit acts as an ‘emergency brake’ for stopping runaway costs from damaging TU Delft.