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Project Brief


Open Competition 1 - Information Technology

Scalable and Reliable Accounting Engine for Inter-Networked Services


Design and prototype a core accounting engine that is flexible and scalable to accommodate a wide range of business models and pricing structures, and reliable to support mission-critical enterprise and carrier services enabling a new generation of networked services.

Sponsor: Tradescape (formerly Xcerla Corporation)

17115 Linda Mesa Drive
Morgan Hill, CA 95037
  • Project Performance Period: 3/1/2003 - 11/30/2004
  • Total project (est.): $1,160,934.00
  • Requested ATP funds: $1,058,025.00

The increase in network bandwidth allows enterprises and service providers to outsource component services and aggregate external resources. Outsourcing of non-core services enables them to focus on their core competencies, thereby improving their operating efficiency and fundamentally changing the way services are delivered. However, the full realization of this inter-networked service economy hinges on the development of a new resource tracking and accounting technology. Xcerla Corporation proposes to develop flexible, large-scale and fault-tolerant resource accounting technology for inter-networked services. The new resource accounting system will enable a broad spectrum of services ranging from next-generation wireless to broadband access services, and from grid computing to Web services. Xcerla's core accounting engine will accommodate a wide range of business models and pricing structures (including micropayments) across a value chain. This project will employ several distributed computing techniques, rarely adopted by mainstream commercial products, to overcome the technical challenge of providing flexibility, scalability, and yet fault-tolerance. Xcerla will use the same technology to address the broad-based needs of the future inter-networked services. In proposing the project, Xcerla brings together a unique partnership of private and academic organizations with complementary expertise, including the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid project, to design and prototype such technology. As a startup company, Xcerla has been unable to obtain private funding, because of the project's high technical risks, or other government research grants for its for-profit business model. ATP funding provides Xcerla with a unique opportunity to develop a high impact technology, license it back to the government research labs and universities free of royalty, and enable a whole generation of inter-networked services.

For project information:
Dr. Jian Zhang, (408) 807-9069
jian@xcerla.com

ATP Project Manager
Barbara Cuthill, (301) 975-3273
barbara.cuthill@nist.gov


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