IT EFFICIENCY & COLLEGE EFFECTIVENESS: MAKING CLOUD COMPUTING WORK FOR YOU

Robin Gadd

Head of Information and Systems Development

Midsize General FE College Strong tertiary mission Central southern England in SE Region (just) New Forest National Park – semi-rural, wide

(international) catchment c.11,000 learners per annum, 14-104 years

old, pre-entry to foundation degree level, and a pre-school nursery

c.200 key employers (mainly SMEs)

Beacon College since 2004 Technology Exemplar Provider since 2008

We do education and training outstandingly well

We’re not an IT service provider(although we try hard to do this outstandingly well

too!)

TECHNOLOGY HYPE CYCLE 2010 (GARTNER)

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1447613

Gartner: Cloud computing is “the most hyped subject in IT today”!!

30 MINUTES TO…

Cut through some of the hype Provide a non-IT-expert guide to “Cloud” Explain what we’ve been doing at Brock Outline the costs and the benefits

So that you… Understand enough about cloud technology

to hold your own in discussions with the techies

Can relate this over-hyped technology to your business priorities

TRADE-OFFS OF “TRAD” IT INVESTMENTS Hardware

Fixed costs; fixed performance! Five-year capitalised ownership = out-dated equipment!

Variable asset utilization Most servers run at 5-20% of processing capacity Even virtualised servers get nowhere near 100%

Data redundancy and security Computing/networking reliability & redundancy Backup and DR (disaster recovery)

Power and cooling efficiency Datacentres: 1 watt to the server, 1.5 watts in overhead!

Personnel costs Recruitment, retention, training

Or maybe we could spend more money at the frontline of teaching

and learning?

CLOUD COMPUTING IS…

“a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of

configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or

service provider interaction”.

(US National Institute of Standards and Technology)

Blah, blah, blah, blah…

“Technology services deliveredover the internet”

CLOUD COMPUTING CAN BE A WAY OF…

Focussing on what we’re good at (educating) Getting more Providing more Spending less Innovating Sharing services Improving

cashflow Capex → Opex

clarionledger.com

THREE CLOUD SERVICE TYPES…

• Email• Office apps• CRM• Facebook

• Developer tools• Databases• Web apps

• Storage (disk space)

• Content delivery• Backup/DR• Compute (processors, memory)

Economies of scale?Rent a piece of this estate…

CLOUD DATA STORAGEOne simple “web service” application connects the data on a computer in College to Amazon cloud storage

Elastic storage!(expands and contracts on

demand)

Typical in-College infrastructure

COSTS: “TRAD” IT VS AMAZON CLOUD

In College (Mostly Capex)450gb Disks - £25k(7TBs = 16 disks @ £1.5k)Disk Array - £7k(big enough to hold up to 90 disks in 3-4 years if necessary!)Total Year 1 = £32k

28TB by year 4 = £107k

+ on-going Opex (maintenance, staff, backup disks & tapes, software licences, aircon, power etc)

+ hardware refresh

In The Cloud (Mostly Opex)Elastic Storage - £3.5k pa(7TBs stored incrementally by end of year @ $0.125 /GB)

Elastic Bandwidth - £1.1k pa(1TB /mth @ $0.150 /GB)

Total Year 1 = £4.6k

28TB by year 4 = £18.4k

Example Project: Digital Media for Teaching and Learning

I’m not the FD, but these numbers look interesting!

CASHFLOW, ROI, AND CAPACITY PLANNING

£32k Capex investe

d

+£25k Capex investe

d

+£25k Capex investe

d

+£25k Capex investe

d

Elastic investment as demand grows (or contracts)>£100k invested, but still not

enough!

CLOUD STUDENT/ALUMNI EMAIL

Exchange Server(s)

One extra program installed on an existing (virtual) server to synchronise user identities with the Live ID cloud service

Typical in-College infrastructure

MORE QUALITY AND LESS COST!

In College Service Level Inbox (200MB) Network file store (200MB) Lost USB sticks galore No external mail send No system redundancy A mediocre experience Low usage

£££ Hardware, software, anti-

virus, backup, DR Maintenance & support

In Cloud Service LevelInbox (10GB)Online file store (25GB)Anti-virus and anti-spamEmail for life (alumni?)An experience that meets expectationsHigh usage

£££Free!Fewer servers, less software, reduced maintenance

No brainer?(providing you have Microsoft systems and can get the connector working

easily!)

Office Online (Word, Excel etc) connected to and delivered with cloud services

Exchange Online - cloud-based e-mail, calendar and contacts with the most current anti-virus and anti-spam solutions

Office SharePoint Online - cloud-based asynchronous virtual learning, shared file stores etc

Lync Online - cloud-based synchronous online teaching with text messenger, presence, screen sharing, voice and video conferencing

The next evolution of Live@Edu... Due in 2011

Highly scalable, up-to-date techA strong platform for innovation

But will it be sufficiently cost effective? Wait and see…

SO DO WE STILL NEED ON-CAMPUS IT?

Yes. Some. PCs, printers, networking, high-end

media But different ownership models; different support

models; utility computing; thin clients A data centre

But smaller; bridge between the college and the cloud; more proactive monitoring/self-healing; shared services

An IT Support structure But smaller; more contract and supplier

relationship management etc… skills gaps?

What are the organisational development implications?

GREY CLOUDS – RISKS?

Our data is somewhere “out there”? Security; public or private cloud? is the door

locked? Where in the world is our stuff?

Legal jurisdictions? regulatory compliance; data protection? £-$ exchange?

SLAs Service/support; uptime guarantees (with financial

penalties?); technical support; time zones? Partners

Trust; reliability Single points of failure?

JANET connection: capacity/cost; redundancy?

Lots of due diligence needed!

FLUFFY WHITE CLOUDS – OPPORTUNITIES! Expenditure management

Spending less; shared/managed services; fewer fixed costs; elastic capacity; moving Capex → Opex; enhanced cashflow

Quality improvement Getting more service/capacity; providing better

services to our customers Innovation and agility

The world changes; IT changes; opportunities change; keeping up with the next big thing!

Focussing on what we’re good at! Keeping what adds value, outsourcing what

doesn’t, adding more value by buying-in just the services we need

If we join the ride down from the “peak of inflated expectations”, we might reach that “plateau of

productivity” in 2 years!!

CONCLUSION: THE BOTTOM LINE

Nick Carr was right! Most computing is

now a “utility” – we can’t live without IT, but “IT doesn’t matter”

Your IT infrastructure doesn’t differentiate you from me!

So don’t spend any more £ (or $) than absolutely necessary on IT!

May 2003

Cloud Computing CAN help!

THANK YOU!RGADD@BROCK.AC.UK