Post on 06-May-2015
description
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Andy Powell, Eduserv Foundationandy.powell@eduserv.org.uk
www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation
Both sides, now
Are we builders or users of services in the cloud?
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 2
Joni Mitchell – Both sides, now
“I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all”
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 3
we live in a rapidly changing environment
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 4
Web 2.0
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 5
services in the “cloud”
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 6
impact on the way universities deliver and consume services
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 7
impact on Eduserv
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 8
primary focus of this talk is Eduserv
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 9
but issues are pertinent to funding bodies, universities and individuals
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 10
what is Eduserv?
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 11
a charity
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 12
a somewhat unusual charity
(you won’t find us rattling tins on the high street)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 13
income thru sale of services
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 14
an educational charity
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 15
“a not for profit IT services company”
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 16
what is our mission?
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 17
“to realise the benefits of ICT for learners, researchers and the institutions that serve
them”
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 18
where are we from?
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 19
Bath
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 20
the University of Bath
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 21
started in the pre-Web era
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 22
spun out of the University more than 10 years ago
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 23
spun out as a charity
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 24
seen as the best way of keeping our assets within the education community
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 25
what are we known for?
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 26
2 things primarily
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 27
1st thing we are known for…
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 28
Access and Identity Management
Athens
(centralised service funded partly by the JISC to provide single sign-on to bibliographic and other network services – still in
use by the NHS)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 29
more recently evolved into a new product suite known as OpenAthens
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 30
outsourced “access and identity” solution for institutions and service providers
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 31
we handle the technology that allows institutions and service providers to join the UK Access
Management Federation
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 32
and other federations
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 33
“we support Shibboleth so you don’t have to”
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 34
but we also support other emerging “identity” standards…
SAML, OpenID and Information Cards
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 35
with the intention of future-proofing services to institutions and content providers
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 36
2nd thing we are known for…
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 37
Licence negotiation
Chest
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 38
the benefits of negotiating as a community
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 39
for software (and other stuff)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 40
both Athens and Chest have been very successful
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 41
and have been provided in a sustainable way for the benefit of the community
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 42
Athens has been a highly reliable part of the academic infrastructure for the last 10 years or
so
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 43
we also do Web hosting, CMS and bespoke Web development
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 44
sometimes for the education sector
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 45
but mainly for the wider public sector
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 46
again, very successfully
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 47
success is what makes us sustainable and cost-effective – in delivering services we tend to
generate operating surpluses
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 48
those surpluses are given back to the community (because we are a charity)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 49
which we do mainly thru our programme of research grants
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 50
managed by the Eduserv Foundation
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 51
which is where I come in
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 52
we are a small funding body
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 53
up to £.5M a year (but typically less in actual grants)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 54
typically, we fund 3 research projects per year
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 55
where each project is equivalent of 1 FTE
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 56
for example
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 57
last year, we funded 4 projects related to Second Life
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 58
Sloodle
(Dan Livingstone, University of West of Scotland)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 59
Learning from Virtual Worlds, Teaching in Second Life
(Diane Carr, London Knowledge Lab)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 60
Theatron
(Hugh Dennard, KCL – though currently being managed by Mark Childs)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 61
Modelling 4 All
(Ken Kahn, University of Oxford)
(not really Second Life at all)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 62
and this year…
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 63
not announced yet
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 64
but
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 65
I’ll tell you anyway
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 66
3 projects
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 67
Creating a W3C Standard for Open Social Networking Data
(Harry Halpin, University of Edinburgh)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 68
Rhizome: exploring strands of online identity in learning, teaching and research
(Steven Warburton, KCL)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 69
This is me
(Shirley Williams, University of Reading)
(small grant)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 70
all in the area of social networks and identity on the Web
(open standards and digital literacy)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 71
we also do other stuff
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 72
an annual symposium and other meetings
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 73
work on interoperability standards
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 74
advice on good practice in areas like metadata, middleware, elearning, virtual worlds, Web 2.0, open access, copyright, information literacy, …
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 75
but…
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 76
but…
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 77
we’ve increasingly come to realise that
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 78
associating our grant-giving with the “Foundation” brand tends to dilute the overall
charitable brand of Eduserv
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 79
the “value” of grant-giving minimal in comparison to “value” of services
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 80
and small scale of grant-giving makes it difficult to ensure impact and “value for money”
(in the way that JISC can for example)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 81
particularly when we try and focus on education generally
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 82
as a result we are beginning to think differently
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 83
new focus on delivering “services” to “higher education”
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 84
with the intention of offering large-scale, resilient, sustainable “data centre” capability
(rack-space and managed hosting)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 85
offering hosted “services”, a “cloud” platform, identity management solutions and licence
negotiation (including SaaS)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 86
but in order to do that properly
we need to understand your requirements
(that means you)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 87
more importantly, we need to understand whether we can do this sustainably in an
environment where existing Web 2.0 services and infrastructure are free/very cheap
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 88
what kinds of “services”?
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 89
we don’t know yet, but…
data repositories, portfolio, assessment, storage infrastructure, high-performance computing,
virtual world hosting (e.g. OpenSim), …
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 90
will you still do Web hosting and CMS type solutions?
yes
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 91
will you still do licence negotiation?
yes
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 92
will you still do access and identity management (OpenAthens)?
yes
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 93
will you still work with the wider public sector and other areas of education?
yes (because that work helps make us sustainable and cost-effective but our primary focus will be HE)
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 94
will you still give research grants?
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 95
yes… probably… but they’ll probably be a bit different
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 96
“work with us to improve our services”
rather than
“here’s some money to do something interesting”
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 97
the fundamental question is
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 98
can we (by which I really mean the wider education community) deliver these kinds of
services sustainably…
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 99
…in a Web 2.0, SaaS, “cloud” world in which lots of very good looking stuff is made available for
free or very cheaply?
can we (by which I really mean the wider education community) deliver these kinds of
services sustainably…
September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 100
thank you