What is meant by “sustained” as it pertains to research platforms?
The focus of the NEP-2 program is on the development and deployment of middleware tools and related platform technologies that will be used by the members of a virtual organization or community of interest in their research activities. Accordingly, each project should lead to infrastructure or other results that will be ongoing after CANARIE funding terminates. The technologies, infrastructures, products or services developed under the project do not need to be commercialized, but there must be some means by which they will be supported or maintained after CANARIE funding terminates. For example, if the virtual organization that is developing and plans to support the proposed research platform has other on-going sources of funding, and plans to put the new tools and technologies into general operation to be supported by staff funded from those other sources, that is clearly one way to create a permanent infrastructure. Another way to provide ongoing modifications and enhancements to ne
