Non-stop processing system: minimizing processing power costs in university environments by reusing workstations

Even if the processing power/price ratio has been increasing significantly during the last years, for some universities the acquisition budget for new equipment still raises issues. In order to increase the available processing power, universities need to purchase new hardware and provide adequate facilities. The trending alternative is to migrate the data processing to a cloud based solution. We propose a novel approach that supplements the data center processing power by reusing the already held computers from laboratories. This lowers the acquisition costs to zero.