[Frost1x]

Not sure about those but it'll be incredibly useful for research grant funding monies. Most research grants are "use it or lose it" so if you have any essential infrastructure, capital with short shelf lives/frequent replacement needs, etc. you want/need after the end of the grant, you pay for it in advance.

A group I worked with bought about 5 years worth of a specific consumable they needed to continue working, 2-3 year service contract with a vendor to maintain aspects of things so some work could continue and be leveraged for future grants, and hosting/software licenses were often purchased for long time horizons in advance, where possible.

With use it or lose it money, you use it. Whether money should be provisioned that way and coming in under budget should be punished is another story...

[ksec]

Oh this is a nice way to lock in all the money from Research Grants. I remember reading on Twitter about some of the research requiring massive amount of compute resources. ( Like a whole region of AWS ). This AWS money pool usage makes sense in that context.