[Foundation-l] ED Report to the Board: February 1 - 29, 2008

Sat Mar 8 17:35:14 UTC 2008

On 3/7/08, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > * We continue to explore consortium options in Amsterdam. Mark and Erik
>  > meet with Kennisnet March 11 and 13.

> Is it possible to get even vague context to this? "Consortium" in what sense?

In May 2005, Kennisnet (a Dutch educational not-for-profit
organization) sponsored a rack of colocation space, servers, bandwidth
and support in the SARA hosting facility in Amsterdam. Since then, our
use of the facility has grown to 3 racks, and bandwidth use has also
increased significantly. We have a three year agreement with
Kennisnet, which will expire in May 2008.

Kennisnet has been more than generous, and we've decided in consensus
that, in order to achieve a sustainable hosting solution in Amsterdam,
it's necessary to bring additional partners (preferably non-profit /
public organizations) into the mix, so that a) the cost is shared, b)
if one partner should be unable to provide support in the future, the
impact is reduced. This is what the "consortium" refers to; a group of
supporters for our hosting needs in Amsterdam.

So, Mark Bergsma, who is our Network Coordinator responsible for the
Amsterdam facility, has been tirelessly reaching out to organizations
that could become part of this consortium, and Mark & I will present a
proposal to Kennisnet next Tuesday, with a follow-up meeting on
Thursday.

-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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