UK university adoption of ‘shared’ cloud

servicesAndy Powell, Eduservwww.eduserv.org.uk/research

twitter.com/andypowe11

Cloudscape-IV, BelgiumFebruary 2012

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Some context…

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/ growing cloud uptake by individual researchers/ partly thru national ‘cloud’-like services, e.g. NGS partly thru Amazon, etc./ some of this arises from frustration with internal IT provision (which is typically very un-cloud-like)/ significant virtualisation initiatives within university IT computing services – mostly VMware/ adoption of SaaS where cost-benefit analysis is a no brainer (Google Mail and Microsoft 365)/ concerns about the ‘open’ research data agenda and data management (particularly in the long term)

UK HEFCE/JISC UMF

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/ University Modernisation Fund/ £12.5 million over ~1 year

/ encouraging adoption of ‘shared’ services for research and administration

/ efficiency and cost-saving as key drivers

/ Eduserv UMF Cloud Pilot – a community Education Cloud

/ JANET Brokerage – framework agreements for purchasing cloud

infrastructure/ plus a range of SaaS initiatives

Barriers to uptake

/ lots of well-known barriers to cloud - trust, security, data protection, patriot act, pricing, bandwidth, SLAs, protecting current staff roles, etc./ saving money is not a key driver of cloud-uptake/ hug a server mentality/ lack of ‘cloud’ thinking – investment and inertia in traditional ‘application hosting’ model/ lack of clarity about internal cost models leading to pricing concerns (c.f. VAT)

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What does ‘shared’ mean anyway?

/ by definition, public cloud is ‘shared’/ but that’s not typically what is meant in context of

the ‘shared service’ agenda in UK HE/ in that context, ‘shared’ means delivered at a

level above a single campus/ shared services have to become sustainable

(member contributions, ongoing national or European

grant funding, moves towards commercial operation)

/ successful adoption of the latter tends to put provider outside what is usually recognised as the

‘shared’ space

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Looking forward…

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Thank you

Image: Duncan~ @ Flickr