Drafted by Alex Prengel 9/28/2009

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Athena the HOW: core software services
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Software delivery via AFS lockers:

1. Commercial software
	a) at cost (to IS&T or end-users)
           AC3D (Inivis)       
           CHEMKIN (Reaction Design)
           Gaussian (Gaussian, Inc.)
           Maple (Maplesoft)
           Mathematica (Wolfram)
           Matlab (The Mathworks)
           Maya (Autodesk)
           Numerical Recipes (old edition)
           Purify (IBM)
           SAS (SAS Institute)
           Splus (Tibco)
           Stata (Stata Inc.)
           Tecplot (Tecplot, Inc.)
           TSM Backup (IBM)
           Xess (Applied Information Systems)

A number of these are licensed on the concurrent floating license
model, where license are served by license servers. This is usually
very economical- as an empirical rule of thumb, about 1 floating
license per 20 users is sufficient to ensure that licenses usually
don't run out. Some are site-licensed. Most are under annual
maintanance, a few are "pay per version".

SAS and Stata are licensed by concurrent use, but the vendors don't
provide a floating license manager. We use the MIT-developed wrapper
to monitor peak concurrent usage to ensure that use does not exceed 
the number of licenses purchased.

Special cases involving extra configuration or restricted access:
Purify, TSM Backup. 

	b) no-cost (donation, freeware, paid for by another department)
           acroread (Adobe)
           Allegro Common LISP (Franz, Inc.)
           AMPL, OPL Studio, CPLEX (ILOG/IBM))
           Cambridge Structural Database (Cambridge Crystallographic Dat Cent)
           CLC Free Sequence Viewer (CLC Bio)
           Discovery Studio Visualizer (Accelrys)
           Eagle (Cadsoft)
           Geneious (Biomatters Ltd.)
           IMSL Numeric Libraries (Visual Numerics)
           JMP (SAS Institute)
           Pro-Engineer (Parametric Technology)
           RealPlayer (RealNetworks)
           Renderman (Pixar)
           saplogon (SAP)
           SNOPT (Stanford Business Software)
           SQLplus (Oracle)
           Sun compilers, Sun Studio (Sun Microsystems)
           TotalView (TotalView Technologies)

For some of these, Athena benefits from site licenss paid for by other groups
(Allegro Common LISP, Cambridge Structural Database, JMP, SNOPT, TotalView).

A few are funded by individual faculty for their courses (AMPL, OPL Studio,
CPLEX) or researchers (TotalView) but usage rights extend to all Athena
users.

2. Free/Open Source software

Installed in lockers (about 65 applications currently):

Diverse set of applications that may not be available as Ubuntu
packages, or may require special configuration for MIT and extra
add-ons (Eclipse, R). Emphasis on scientific/technical applications.

Lockers can be set up and made available on short notice- sometimes less than
a day; allows delivery of very recent software releases and security updates.

Many applications are compiled from source code where this is available for 
optimal integration into our environment.

Installed as Ubuntu packages (about 105 applications currently):

Many are in the debathena-thirdparty metapackage installed by default
on debathena cluster machines. This can be updated with additional
packages on a few day's notice. This makes it very easy and
low-maintenance to add additional applications, but they may not
always be the latest versions.

New on debathena: users now have the option to install any Ubuntu
packages they want (thousands are available), at least temporarily for
the duration of a login session (or permanently on private
workstation machines).

Miscellaneous Athena services:

Training tutorials on the Web (Matlab, Maple)

Documentation 

	What Runs Where guide to Athena software
 	online manuals and demos
	local web pages for major applications
	hardcopy documentation available by request

Custom software installation and services by faculty/course request.

Metrics for Athena software and Athena cluster usage:

	MIT wrapper log reports
	license server log reports
	Athena logins and cluster usage reports

Additional new ways for collecting metrics are planned for debathena.

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Software services the HOW
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Floating license servers:

1. For Athena applications (as mentioned above).

2. For general software delivery at MIT beyond Athena (ESRI, ENVI-IDL,
Maple, student Matlab, OPL Studio/AMPL/CPLEX, Pro-Engineer, TotalView,
Xess).

Specialized low-volume software distribution:

Done via loaner media/documentation sets or online distribution

	Xess 		(loaner media)
	Gaussian	(loaner media, online distribution)
	JMP 		(online distribution; also annual key updates)
	OPL Studio/AMPL (online distribition)

Student Matlab:

Custom-rebuilt installers for MIT students; updated annually and runs
off a dedicated license server- floating license use is a key feature
in making this affordable and allowing delivery of extensive Toolbox
suite to students at no cost.

Keyserving project (beginning):

Allows the economy of the concurrent license model with applications that don't
incorporate license servers internally. Will begin with a suite of Adobe
products, expect later expansion to others.