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Potential Business Model

Assumptions

- RWSL Lab services are a valuable commodity and institutions without adequate remote lab services will pay something for remote lab services.  See also NANSLO RDN Services and Advantages .

- Institutions will invest in their own RWSL Nodes

- Institutions will pay (or trade) something for NANSLO RDN remote lab services.

- Institutions will want some compensation for serving remote lab services to the NANSLO RDN.

- We will want to offer support to smaller institutions while NOT being inhospitable to larger institutions.

Initial Cost Handling (This is for the costs for initially building RWSL Nodes) 

- RWSL Node building will be financed by individual institutions possibly using grants.  NANSLO will keep a list of grant opportunities and support institutions trying to build RWSL Nodes by supplying this list and expertise in applying for these grants and building RWSL Nodes.

Operational Costs

- Institutions will serve their own students first and shoulder those costs in their own way.

- Institutions will want value for lab services they share to the NANSLO RDN. 

Derivation of a financial formula

- A value needs to be derived for serving RWSL lab services to the NANSLO RDN.  This value will be expressed as a price/network-hour.

- A cost needs to be derived for receiving RWSL lab services from the NANSLO RDN.  This cost will be expressed as a cost/network-hour

(The above values will not necessarily be the same and may vary from lab to lab.  Some possible variations might be:

- cost/network-hour might be placed higher than price/network-hour, but the differential between the 2 should not be large and will be offset by giving serving institutions access to the NANSLO RWSL tech support network, NANSLO RWSL development nodes, and NANSLO governance bodies. See NANSLO RDN Management Model

- price and cost/network-hour for a "common" lab might be less highly valued than price and cost/network-hour for an "uncommon" lab.

- There may be a cost to price differential between smaller institutions and larger institutions, but this needs to be done in a balanced way.

)

- There needs to be a value placed on RWSL development nodes.  Probably an institution that hosts a development node will derive credit toward remote lab services or receive fees.  Or possibly development nodes would be more efficiently operated by central organizations such as BCcampus or WICHE.

Document End

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Input: Everyone, please insert anything you think I should include or any pertinent comments in the comments at the bottom of this document.  I will incorporate them into this section when I write it.  Thanks!

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