Data Centre Strategy - Association of Colleges · Data Centre Strategy Summary Implementation Plan...
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Data Centre Strategy
Data Centre Services for the Higher Education Sector
Prepared by JANET(UK) on behalf of the Higher Education Funding Council for
England.
11 March 2010
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Data Centre Services for the Higher Education Sector
Executive Summary
The Higher Education sector has not been in a position to make optimal use of potential shared data centre
services. Technologies, funding and organisational drivers have resulted in institutions having little alternative
but to develop their own internal resources. Such internal resources cover a wide spectrum from scattered
servers in cupboards and under desks, to multiple machine or server rooms, through to highly efficient data
centres, capable of meeting internal and external needs. This institution bounded approach to provision is
fundamentally unsustainable for external and internal reasons.
External drivers such as power costs and availability, carbon reduction legislation and funding restrictions will
impact significantly on institutional data centres. There are concerns regarding facility availability and
condition, lack of cooling as well as about reliability, resilience and business continuity. At the same time data
usage (and storage) is increasing significantly. There is the fundamental question of whether running data
centres is a core activity for institutions. These issues are driving towards an appreciation that a more
comprehensive, integrated set of solutions is required.
This document, the result of an extensive sector and supplier consultation exercise funded by the Higher
Education Funding Council for England, develops a data centre approach centred on the HE sector, reconciling
key drivers and seeking to optimize the use and reuse of existing data centres whilst maximising the
opportunities available through new provision and new models of provision. A mechanism is created for
institutions to optimize their provision in terms of cost, efficiency and environmental status, whilst retaining
the autonomy to manage their constraints, whether cultural, risk, or technology oriented.
Re-use of existing provision
There are significant existing resources that can be more fully utilized within the sector, however this cannot
currently be achieved efficiently. The substantial barriers to the re-use include variability in facilities standards,
network connectivity, lack of common standards and predicted future use. There are significant opportunities
through virtualisation to establish a common platform easing migration and interoperability as well as to lower
cost, assist asset consolidation, service development and contribute toward environmental improvements.
From this basis a recommendation is made that a national brokerage service be established, with a remit to
improve existing facilities and enable better re-use of those facilities. Inherent within this recommendation is
the need to provide a common framework for the categorization of existing data centres.
New Provision
It is concluded that despite initiatives such as virtualisation and better use of the cloud, existing provision will
not cover the needs of the sector into the medium term, therefore new provision is required. Two new
provision models were initially identified, ‘kindred spirits’ and ‘national resource’, however, it is clear that a
range of services are required and the essential component is a coordinating mechanism for bringing the
needs of the sector to the commercial market effectively, procuring, and delivering those services in a timely
and highly cost efficient manner.
A national brokerage to support, drive and coordinate data centre services provision for the sector is required
to enable services development, quality improvement and simultaneous cost savings.
Way Forward
Building on the existing skills in operational excellence, reliable, scalable infrastructure delivery and
procurement and bringing the needs of the HE sector to engage with commercial suppliers, it is likely that
JANET(UK) is the correct vehicle to deliver data centre services for the sector. It is proposed that JANET(UK)
build on the migration plan contained in this document to provide these key services in a manner that delivers
substantive savings, is accountable, and sustainable into the future.
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Contents
Data Centre Services for the Higher Education Sector ....................................................... 1
Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................................................ 2 Re-use of existing provision............................................................................................................................................... 2 New Provision .......................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Way Forward ........................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Data Centre Services Strategy Plan ................................................................................... 4
Background - Recent Studies ...................................................................................................................................... 5 Shared High End Data Centre Study ......................................................................................................................... 5 Tripartite Shared Data Centre .................................................................................................................................... 5 Regional Data Shared Services ................................................................................................................................... 5
Drivers ............................................................................................................................. 6
Financial ............................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Environmental ................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Operational Drivers......................................................................................................................................................... 7 Technical Drivers ............................................................................................................................................................. 7 Cultural Drivers ................................................................................................................................................................ 8 Summary.............................................................................................................................................................................. 8
Provision ......................................................................................................................... 9
Re-use of existing provision ........................................................................................................................................ 9 New Provision ................................................................................................................................................................... 9 Provision Delivery ......................................................................................................................................................... 10
Delivery Model ............................................................................................................... 11
Governance Model .............................................................................................................................................................. 12 Outcomes & transformations .................................................................................................................................... 12 Scope ................................................................................................................................................................................... 12
Next Steps ...................................................................................................................... 14
Service Menu .................................................................................................................................................................... 14 Sustainability ........................................................................................................................................................................ 15
Funding Requirements ................................................................................................................................................ 16 Staff Resources ..................................................................................................................................................................... 16 Non-Staff Resources ........................................................................................................................................................... 17 Service Costs .......................................................................................................................................................................... 17
Implementation Plan .................................................................................................................................................... 17 Proposed Project Phasing ............................................................................................................................................... 17 Sample Target Measurement ........................................................................................................................................ 18 Staffing Plan .......................................................................................................................................................................... 18 Initial steps – scoping exercise ..................................................................................................................................... 18
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Data Centre Services Strategy Plan
This document is the product of consultation with the higher education and commercial sectors, structured
exercises including a request for information from suppliers and a survey of institutions, numerous site visits,
and a full day sector workshop on 7th
December 2009. This study was funded by the Higher Education Funding
Council for England.
Most universities have two or more data centres, of varying effectiveness and efficiency levels, many are
supported by internal teams who provide this support as part of wider roles. Each institution has had little
alternative but to develop its own internal resource. The result is that the HE sector is not using data centre
services provision in an optimal way and, moving forward, internal and external factors render this approach
unsustainable.
External drivers such as increasing power costs and concerns about availability; carbon charging and linkage
with funding; and anticipated funding cuts will impact significantly on institutional data centres. There are
concerns regarding existing facility availability and condition, lack of cooling as well as about reliability,
resilience and business continuity. At the same time data usage (and storage) is increasing significantly. There
is the fundamental question of whether running data centres is a core activity for institutions. These issues are
driving towards an appreciation that a more comprehensive, integrated set of solutions is required.
This need is increasingly widely appreciated within the sector. A survey for this strategy noted that over 40%
or respondents are looking to collaborate on shared services data centre in the next 3-6 years with the five
main areas being virtualisation, data back-up, data archiving / repository, business continuity / disaster
recovery, and full secondary sites. The appetite to move forward with new services is apparent from survey
responses such as the following: “My vision would be to jump to Cloud and SaaS rather than simply move our
kit out…”, and the largest hurdle is perceived risk, risk of shared provision not being available, when, and how,
needed.
This image, taken from the BCS white paper on data centre efficiency highlights the situation well.
(http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.22351)
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Background - Recent Studies
There have been a number of recent studies into data centre provision in the education sector, these studies
have aimed to create new initiatives, and have delivered some valuable outcomes.
Shared High End Data Centre Study
The Russell Group of Universities, through its group of IT Directors (RUGIT), identified a common need for high
end data centre requirements and wished to determine whether a unified Shared High End Data Centre
(SHED) will deliver efficiencies for participating higher education institutions and provide a rational solution in
the context of finite resources and the increasingly important energy and environmental factors.
Stakeholder views and needs were canvassed using a questionnaire, meetings and workshops in order to
compile a balanced view of the overall need and to understand the underlying drivers and issues, and Logica
compiled an Outline Business Case. The results indicated a broad spectrum of requirements that the group
could fulfill with a more attractive proposition than the commercial market. If this potential demand were
scaled to the wider higher education sector it would generate an even greater pooled resource capturing
significant benefit through aggregation. An additional result was suggested that a significant number of data
centres will reach end of life in the next 3 years with a second group reaching end of life in 2019, therefore a
coordinated solution is needed in the next 2-3 years to achieve maximum benefit. It is worth noting that this
saving was premised on significant investment in facilities, however, given the commercial market and a sector
wide coordinated approach, buying this as a managed service is potentially a cost equivalent solution.
Possible savings: £100M saving for shared provision over 15 years within the Russell Group.
Tripartite Shared Data Centre
Logica also prepared a report on a prospective tripartite data centre initially between Sheffield Hallam, Derby
and Salford universities. Sheffield-Hallam left the project and was latterly replaced by the University of
Leicester. Each institution has a requirement for additional data centre capacity and disaster recovery and
business continuity provision, but none has a significant requirement for high-performance computing. The
study showed that a shared service data centre is technically viable in meeting the Universities’ medium- and
long-term needs. However, ultimately the project has concluded that building a data centre for these three
partners is not an appropriate or viable solution; the project illustrated the difficulties for institutions working
directly with each other, even in environments of relatively high trust, with differing levels of technical
maturity, timescales, needs and strategic directions all becoming barriers.
Regional Data Shared Services
Yorkshire & Humberside Metropolitan Academic Network (YHMAN) provides networking services to eight Joint
Venture universities across the region. A number of these universities are experiencing pressure on their data
centres due to increased demand for services whereas others have just brought, or are about to bring extra DC
capacity on stream. With this in mind YHMAN has considered the potential for utilising the current or
imminent ‘headroom’ in some university data centres to meet the increased demand in others, as well as
providing true cross-city business continuity/disaster recovery services for its members.
This, combined with a shared services agenda, created the Shared Virtual Data Centre (SVDC) initiative to
investigate the feasibility of sharing DC services, such as rack space or physical data centre infrastructure.
Potentially other services could also be offered including a virtualised storage platform, shared application
provision and support, shared commodity business processing, and joint service offerings such as shared
email, finance systems etc.
Possible savings: Some £20M for the five contributing institutions over 10 years, and potentially, if scaled to
sector level, £200M over 10 years.
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Drivers
The drivers for a coordinated strategy for data centre services provision are varied and can be overlaid to form
a complex illustration. There are (inter)national factors, such as financial and environmental issues,
institutional factors such as efficiency seeking, cost saving and service improvements, and sub-organisational
with departments needing resources and enabling research, finally there are individual trends whereby
provision alternatives are more available than ever before. A separate segmentation could follow the more
standard PEST analysis, this document takes elements of both approaches to build a picture of major
influencing factors.
Financial
The HE sector spends some £800M on ICT provision each year and a significant proportion of this total cost is
spent on the provision and support of facilities that could be termed data centres. This figure, although
significant, is unlikely to reflect true total costs of ownership, as in a recent survey 90% of IT directors who
responded stated they did not have visibility of the financial costs necessary to focus on data centre costs.
The costs associated with running data centres are sometimes split into three main areas, staffing,
connectivity and energy. Staffing is relatively controllable, with potential savings through shared facilities,
connectivity is controllable through JANET, an original shared service, energy costs cannot be controlled
within the sector and are likely to rise significantly.
At the institutional level the cost of provision of in-house data centres will increase significantly over the next
five to ten years as power costs increase and become more transparent, business rates for data centres are
evaluated and environmental taxes are implemented. The Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme will come
into effect in April 2010 with associated costs for large organisations and increasingly funding will be linked
with carbon reduction.
These cost increases occur at the same time that education institutions are facing the consequences of
recession, likely constraints on public spending and increased competition from education alternatives around
the globe. For many organizations there will be a lack of available capital for investment, the shared data
centre model allows a move to operational expenditure smoothing finances and also giving the potential to tie
costs more closely to usage and permit scalability without overheads.
The range of facilities, both in scale and efficiency, makes it relatively difficult to put specific figures on
potential savings, however through existing studies, base calculations and reference to similar initiatives it is
possible to provide some indicative base figures.
Study Saving Saving over 10
years across sector
SHED £100M over 15 years for Russell Group alone (assuming only half
the equivalent benefit is applicable across the sector)
£220 M
Salford, Derby,
Leicester
£45M annually (This figure is based on the power study calculation
derived as part of the study. This finding is valid irrespective of any
questions regarding the applicability of the study moving forward)
£450 M
YHMAN £20M annually £200 M
Total £850 M
There is clearly some overlap on these figures, however even assuming 30% double counting it is likely that
data centre consolidation has the potential to generate savings in the region of £500M over 10 years. This in
line with the recent leaked government report on public sector IT. This document noted in its Common
Infrastructure section that the programme of activity that will consolidate and reduce the number of data
centres in use from the current many hundreds to 10-12 “will deliver highly resilient, secure data centres that
reduce cooling and power consumption by up to 75% on current infrastructure. It will also reduce IT
infrastructure costs by up to £300m per annum by 2020”.
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These figures do not give any account of additional benefits derived from shared software licensing and
provision, from potential staffing savings or higher quality, more ubiquitously professional data centre services
provision. Nor do these figures attempt to estimate the current overhead in management time running,
maintaining facilities and the opportunity cost of evaluating, and proceeding with, alternative solutions. This
strategy has the potential to underpin the sector into the future, providing an infrastructure base for initiatives
such as the JISC FSD programme, as well as for business process developments across the sector and beyond.
Environmental
Data centres are one of the fastest growing components of an institution’s ‘carbon footprint’. The SusteIT
report estimates that UK higher education has 215,000 servers, which will probably account for almost a
quarter of the sector’s estimated ICT-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of 275,000 tonnes, and ICT-
related electricity bill of £61 million in 2009 (from Energy Efficient Data Centres in Further and Higher
Education, JISC paper, James and Hopkinson). This is significantly greater than for the UK further education
sector which has an estimated 23,000 servers. This growing demand has to be reconciled with carbon
reduction commitments tied to institutional funding.
Operational Drivers
Many existing data centres do not conform to current or future regulatory requirements such as the EU Code
of Conduct on Energy Efficient Data Centres, thus institutions will need to find new solutions. The SusteIT
survey found that 63% of responding institutions were expecting to make additional investments in housing
servers within the next two years (James and Hopkinson, 2009), however these institutions are frequently
constrained by finances, availability of suitable sites or power, requirements for disaster recovery and
business continuity amongst other operational needs.
Real estate near to institutions is frequently limited and valuable. Estate currently occupied by data centres
can be more valuable to institutions for uses other than data centre provision being re-used for activities that
are closer to the core purpose of the organization (e.g. teaching/research) or for revenue generation, or sold.
Technical Drivers
Information is becoming unbounded from geographic location. Digitised data, online learning, hosted software
solutions, software (and platform) as a service models, social media and web2.0 usage are all increasing at a
dramatic rate, new services and storage models are developing outside the boundaries of the campus.
Research oriented applications such as simulations, modelling and intensive calculations have seen similar
growth rates as such High Performance Computing (HPC) or compute intensive usage becomes fundamental
across many disciplines. The result, in addition to the increasing importance of the network itself, is that
demand for greater data centre capacity in further and higher education is rising rapidly.
Growing use of internet media and online learning, and user demands for faster location independent
connectivity with services. The emphasis is on the service and benefits rather than on location and
institutional boundaries, shared data centres offer the potential to be centres of expertise benefitting the
sector.
Institutions are moving to web based interfaces for systems and comprehensive enterprise resource planning
(ERP) software solutions which are more compute intensive to deliver, and can be delivered remotely;
The capacity of the JANET network is key to effective provision and modeling work should be undertaken to
understand the impact of data centre provision on the network.
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Cultural Drivers
Institutions are facing significant finance and competitive pressures and are thus considering the validity of
existing models and assumptions. Organisations will demonstrate an increased willingness to question
existing assumptions and innovate as a reflection of the underlying pressures they face. Software is no longer
developed in-house and delivered from in-house servers, it is flexible, shared, outsourced, standardized,
hosted, remotely maintained and available in any location. There is an increased willingness to adopt shared
services, motivated by financial and political drivers as well as an influx of more commercial IT professionals.
Institutional data centre provision is increasingly seen as non-core activity, and this trend is likely to continue;
data centres will be visible as major cost centres with viable, scalable, resilient, cost effective alternatives. The
case for in-house operated and maintained data centres is likely to be increasingly questioned by senior
management, particularly with increasing and increasingly transparent costs and risk audits. The result is that a
greater number of institutions will outsource their data centre provision partially or entirely.
Individual departments and research groups are more able to bypass institutional systems to choose
alternative solutions (such as using Amazon’s cloud). Sector supported data centre provision could provide
models that would bring this within appropriate governance models.
Summary
Key drivers are thus :
• Significantly reduce costs by consolidation of disparate data centre services and facilities into more
efficient facilities, both by efficient use of existing resources and by the acquisition of new facilities;
• Improve the quality of data centre services available to the HE and research sector, establishing a base
for the adoption of flexible and responsive services to meet institution needs;
• Establish the sector as a leading partner in the green agenda, developing appropriate solutions whilst
significantly reducing the carbon footprint for the entire sector;
• Move the sector ahead, anticipating the drivers to move to a new provision model that puts the sector in
the optimal position into the future;
• Provide the key storage and services infrastructure, to partner with the JANET network, to enable UK
education and research to function responsively and competitively;
• Ensure appropriate security and governance to enable the sector to have confidence in new operating
models and technologies;
• Build a national centre of expertise, with professional teams available to advise the sector.
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Provision
There are two main aspects this strategy seeks to address, the types of provision that can be provided, and the
mechanism for delivering that provision and associated cost savings and service improvements. The HE sector
has significant existing data centre resources, and this investment can be leveraged more effectively, thus one
aim is to seek to optimize the use and reuse of existing data centres. However, existing provision is by
definition, finite and is of variable quality, therefore the second aim is to establish a model for the provision
of new data centre services. These aims are considered in the cultural context of the HE sector and
recognizes the importance of allowing institutions to optimize their provision in terms of cost, efficiency and
environmental status, whilst retaining the autonomy to manage their constraints, whether cultural, risk, or
technology oriented.
Re-use of existing provision
There are significant existing resources that can be more fully utilized within the sector, however this cannot
currently be achieved efficiently. The substantial barriers to the re-use of existing provision are identified, such
as the variability in facilities standards, network connectivity, lack of common standards and predicted future
use. Universities are individually virtualising services, and there are opportunities through virtualisation to
establish a common platform. This platform would enable the migration of services to service the needs of
groups of institutions and to be scaled for national provision. This will be key to be optimal use of existing and
new provision. This platform will need, at minimum common standards and interoperability, however sector
wide aggregated procurement for a virtualisation system (or virtualisation integration system) could bring
significant benefits, compared with individual procurements. YHMAN is examining models for re-use of
facilities between institutions and building service level agreements, this opportunity, together with an
understanding of the processes involved will be valuable contributions to this area.
This re-use will require an intermediary to operate and the recommendation is made that a national
brokerage service be established, with a remit to enable greater, more efficient, re-use of existing facilities.
Inherent within this recommendation is the need to provide a common framework for the categorization of
existing data centres, recognizing the varying standards and qualities.
New Provision
It is concluded that despite initiatives such as virtualisation, existing provision will not cover the needs of the
sector into the medium term, therefore new provision is required. Two new provision models were identified,
‘kindred spirits’ and ‘national resource’.
Kindred Spirits – Small groups of institutions, with common needs and a good cultural fit, create data centre
provision based on existing resources to meet those needs and with the capability to scale to include
additional members and provide additional services. These centres could use a governance model that is
suited to the close fit and shared understanding. However, as the Salford, Derby, Leicester project showed, in
practice even within close groups, there are substantive concerns regarding cultural and legal relations, entry /
exit issues, governance and lack of financial advantages, these are likely to derail many of the initiatives. Hence
more focus is directed toward the opportunities from aggregated data centre services.
National Resource – These data centres are established to fulfill wider needs, including more commodity
provision. These are likely to be highly cost efficient centres run on a more explicitly commercial governance
model with services provided to generate revenue to continue and improve provision. It is expected that these
will be highly scalable centres. These centres are culturally further from the close-group activities oft seen in
the sector, however they offer the sector longer term savings and service improvement opportunities and
prepare the sector for likely technology and service delivery developments.
Initial projects considered that data centres would be purpose built by the sector, however extensive
discussions with the commercial sector has highlighted good current levels of availability (ie a significant over
supply) in existing commercially available facilities. Future build or buy decisions will be considered through
financial analysis and appropriate business plans.
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The geographic spread of data centres will remain a key point for discussion and it is envisaged that a spread
around the country would be beneficial. This is partially in response to perceived technical constraints,
partially service optimisation e.g. for disaster recovery and risk planning, but also to ensure cultural
acceptance as institutions become accustomed to moving services outside the institution walls.
Provision Delivery
It is evident from discussions during the process of creating this strategy that the majority of the issues
associated with shared data centre services are not purely technical. Issues include the technical maturity of
the organisations, the prevailing cultural perspective within institutions, and the silo structure of
organisations. Data centre services cross many different functions, estates, IT, academic, research and senior
management, and that has, in many cases, meant lack of a common language and a lack of clarity regarding
total costs of ownership. It is also evident that HEFCE have a key role in ensuring success of this strategy in
several ways, not least by guiding institutions toward shared solutions, possibly changing the language
towards an expectation of adoption in specific categories.
To move forward, be ready for new higher quality services and generate savings institutions need more than a
one-size-fits-all or technical solution. This strategy proposes the creation of a coordinating delivery
mechanism, delivered through a suitable sector organisation, JANET(UK), ensuring appropriate delivery and
accountability back to the sector.
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Delivery Model
It is proposed that JANET(UK) will act as a brokerage both within the sector and between the sector and
commercial suppliers. JANET(UK) already has the majority of the core competencies required in this area,
already acting as an intermediary and operational partner for the sector. As a trusted infrastructure provider
the JANET(UK) brand can be effectively leveraged to deliver a more coordinated, rapid, and reliable
implementation than other alternatives such as creating a new organization. Requests for JANET(UK) to take
the role as trusted broker in this area have been voiced by members of the community, such as Loughborough
University, therefore this direction would be responding to the expressed needs of the community. With
respect to data centre services JANET(UK) would thus fulfill the following remit:
1. Change Consultancy – the expertise to work with institutions (or groups of institutions), assisting in
identifying, planning and migrating services, ensuring organisations are culturally and technically
ready to adopt new services;
2. Service and Operational Management – ensuring the effective operational delivering of leading-edge
data centre services from providers to institutions, developing services in line with defined strategies
and operating such activities as ensuring delivery of service level agreements. 24x7 support for all
services.
3. Subject and Technical Expertise –Sharing best practice, providing access to subject matter experts in
the area of delivering technology solutions to the HEI community, these would include, server and
storage technology, IT service management, data centre facility management, IT security etc. Being a
centre of excellence, delivering the knowledge and expertise to the sector, dedicated to improving
and delivering leading edge services;
4. Acquisition and Procurement – maximizing purchasing power, acting as an intelligent customer
taking the needs of the sector and organisations to the commercial market, achieving the best results
through aggregation of demand and intelligent purchasing or if required, by new build facilities.
The engagement is likely to be similar to the existing JANET(UK) model and is depicted below.
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Governance Model
The operational model is highly analogous to the JANET(UK) model and it is anticipated that the governance
structure would also be similar. This could be within the existing JANET(UK) organisation or as a subsidiary
organisation. The organisation would need to be able to contract with commercial organisations and be a legal
entity, the appropriate structure would appear to be a company limited by guarantee, although alternative
options are possible. The company would need to be accountable back to the sector, therefore the board
could be composed of sector and stakeholder representatives and the organisation could be guided through a
stakeholder advisory group.
Outcomes & transformations
This brokerage model may better by explained with reference to the types of transformation evident by its
outputs and the organisational responsibilities. These are illustrated in the figure below.
For a Director of IT the process will be similar in many ways to acquiring the network infrastructure, in that the
services will be developed in response to the most demanding of sector needs, will be procured centrally to
achieve maximum value and then made available directly to the institution. The Director will select which
services his/her institution wishes to acquire as required.
Scope
There is the potential to generate the efficiencies and improvements for the sector as shown in the table
below These figures have been derived based primarily on the HE sector in England, however the underlying
principles apply across the UK, and also beyond the HE sector. Therefore, it is envisaged that a key activity will
be to engage with colleagues in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales as key partners, and also with the FE
sector to deliver optimum savings and maximum benefits.
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Benefit Detail 10 Year saving
Release of Staff
Time
Full time DC management and administration is no longer
required. Even if a secondary DC is kept onsite this could be
monitored and managed more by the coordinating organisation,
with less local loading, particularly as services are virtualized. Staff
have a single resource to call on for assistance and advice. The
reduction of one full-time equivalent person for each English HE
institution can save the sector £10 million per year (132
institutions x £75K).
£100 M
Release of
Management
Time
Management no longer have to spend significant amounts of time
considering data centre provision, and the time that is spent is
more productive, pro-actively anticipating future needs rather
than reacting to immediate concerns and needs. Assuming there is
a 5% time saving, assuming 2 senior IT managers per institution
this equates to £2 million.
£20 M
Professional
Expertise
Service staff controlled by the coordinating organisation are fully
dedicated to DC services management, giving an intensive
professional resource available for the sector, up-skilling DC
operators in the institutions. This increases the efficiency of the
organisations and reduces external contracting costs
Income generation
rather than direct
savings
Release of Real
Estate
The movement of services to core facilities will reduce the amount
of real estate used for on-campus DC provision, lessening the
maintenance burden on the IT Director, and increasing the value
of the estate for e.g. teaching and learning
Income generation
rather than direct
savings
Reduction of
Power Costs
The move to external, shared provision significantly reduces the
power usage for DC’s on campus, one of the larger power users, in
some circumstances this has the potential to drop institutions
below the CRC limit. As noted previously, the potential saving is
estimated at £45m per year.
£450 M
Risk Reduction More coordinated management and services can provide a level of
data resilience that cannot be practically achieved by individual
institutions. Furthermore the assurance that comes from full
dedicated due diligence, procurement, monitoring and
management is significant.
Service quality
improvement
Operational
Savings
Taking the SHED report to represent the typical level of savings
from shared, consolidated DC provision, and weighting the Russell
Group such that only half the equivalent benefit is manifest at the
sector level.
£220 M
Virtualisation
Consolidation
Taking the YHMAN report and extrapolating across the sector,
however assuming 50% overlap with operational savings and
power cost reduction
£100 M
Virtualisation
Benefits
A coordinated virtualisation programme could better utilise the
massive amounts of computing power that is redundant for much
of the time, this could provide a resource of international
significance.
New high
performance
opportunity
Total savings to the sector £890 M
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Next Steps
Service Menu
The initial service menu is based on the most frequently stated needs from the community, together with an
appreciation of the likely migration route for institutions from in-house to off-campus models. It is likely to
include the following areas, however one major purpose of the scoping stage and the communications plans
will be to confirm early research, identify any additional/substitute areas, and quantify likely commitment to
establish a solid base for the service menu and ensure a successful, sustainable delivery model.
1. Colocation
2. Virtualisation
3. Back-up and Data Archiving
4. Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity
5. Cloud services
6. Software as a service pilot – E.g. email with acceptable governance or anti-spam software
This portfolio aligns well with major trends in the sector and models of provision. Several of these trends are
depicted in the image below.
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In addition to providing a menu of services, this service will assist organisations with the preparation and
migration of services to shared hosted facilities. Within the Salford, Derby, Leicester report, nine stages have
been identified by PTS consulting:
1. Pre-migration consultancy and scoping
2. Application and service mapping benchmarking
3. Customer service requirements
4. Service catalogue generation
5. New service requirements generation
6. Service procurement
7. Service migration planning
8. Service migration activity
9. Retirement and decommission of old services
These form a useful illustrative framework for developments, and a key aspect will be to consider related
issues such as the potential impact on licensing and the opportunity for new models, this service will be well
placed to look at this area and the wider implications for savings across the sector and beyond.
Sustainability
This service can be initially formed with limited staffing focused in the following areas: change consultancy,
marketing and communications, service and operational management, subject and technical expertise,
procurement and support; the majority of the functions would be outsourced, acquired as needed, thus the
base running costs are kept to a minimum.
Initially this would need to be funded centrally, however it is expected that by exploiting the significant
opportunities, the organisation would become self-sustaining within four years whilst reducing costs for the
sector. VAT, although an issue in such organisations, should not be material due to the substantive nature of
the potential savings.
A key activity will be to refine provisioning and procurement models to work efficiently with the commercial
sector, and to develop cost and billing models.
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Funding Requirements
Staff Resources
JANET(UK) has the majority of the skill sets internally, however, this is a significant project and appropriate
resourcing will be critical to ensure successful delivery. The staffing model is to keep headcount to a minimum
whilst building a level of expertise necessary for effective delivery and a level of engagement to ensure
engagement, take up and value for money.
Change Consultancy – This area is crucial, working with organisations, helping the migration of their services
and addressing the technical and non-technical issues associated with the move to adopting new models and
services. Although JANET(UK) already advises institutions, it is likely that a new team will be required to deliver
this function efficiently. This is likely to require upfront investment to create critical mass and enable the
project, the equivalent of 4 full time posts in the first year. The model for this area will be a small internal team
that contracts with external providers for the majority of the operational work, this maintains a centre of
experience whilst keeping costs to a minimum. 4 FTE
Marketing and Communications – Awareness within the sector is varied, and a key aspect of effective
provision will be to communicate effectively, generate demand to drive uptake and thus deliver value. It is
likely that there will need to be two full time marketing/comms staff. This area will have two dedicated staff
and will contract with external agencies etc as required. 2 FTE
Service and Operational Management – ensuring the effective operational delivering of data centre services
from providers to institutions, developing services in line with defined strategies and operating such activities
as ensuring delivery of service level agreements. 24x7 support for all services, probably delivered through the
suppliers. This area would grow significantly as the project develops, initially the requirements are relatively
modest. This area will have a critical mass of internal staff, supplemented by external, supplier expertise for
the implementation of projects. Equivalent of 4 staff members. 4 FTE
Subject and Technical Expertise – providing access to subject matter experts in the area of delivering
technology solutions to the HEI community, these would include, server and storage technology, IT service
management, data centre facility management, IT security etc. Being a centre of excellence, delivering the
knowledge and expertise to the sector, dedicated to improving and delivering leading edge services. This is
closely aligned with the service and operational management, and will rely on their expertise, an additional
person is likely to be required. This is an internal resource that will work with the service and operational
management team and with commercial providers and thus engage with the rest of the sector on a
consultancy basis 3 FTE
Acquisition, Procurement and legal advice – acting as an intelligent customer taking the needs of the sector
and organisations to the commercial market, achieving the best results through aggregation of demand and
intelligent purchasing or if required, by new build facilities. The majority of these skills exist within JANET(UK),
it is anticipated one additional staff member will be required. 1 FTE
Service Functions – ancillary functions such as finance and billing, business development administration,
project and general management. It is clear that a substantive project will take additional resources to
function adequately, it is likely to require four staff equivalents. 4 FTE
Total 18 FTE on average of band 7 = £75,000 x 18 = £1,350,000
Data Centre Strategy Summary Implementation Plan Version 1.6
March 2010 page 17
Non-Staff Resources
Staff will requires standard facilities, computing, travel and other operating overheads, this has been
estimated at equal to staff costs.
Provision and operating = £1,350,000
Service Costs
These resourcing figures are for the provision of the service itself, they deliberately do not include estimates
for the procured services. These will be estimated on a service by service basis and then best value achieved
through managed procurement processes. The first of these service costs will be identified as part of the pilot
phase following initial scoping.
Implementation Plan
The use of an existing organisation, together with a low risk approach mean that this strategy can be
operationalised for a comparatively small outlay, and with regular review opportunities.
The project design and staffing has been phased to allow the initial work could be achieved with a gradually
increasing team, therefore by the end of year one there will be a staff level of 10. If the project were to
commence in March 10, the total staffing cost for the academic year 2009/2010 would be £156,250, in the
year 2010/2011 £818,750 and in the year 2011/2012 £1,256,250. By addressing the sustainability issues from
inception it is possible to design revenue streams into development to ensure the service can be self-
sustaining.
Proposed Project Phasing
Data Centre Strategy Summary Implementation Plan Version 1.6
March 2010 page 18
Sample Target Measurement
Through this approach it is also possible to quickly determine target figures to track achievement and
performance. Making the assumption of a linear uptake, and taking the existing figures for the number of
racks in the sector (12,000) it is possible to establish goals for uptake over the first three academic years as
below:
Academic Year 1 Take up 196 racks
Academic Year 2 Take up 784 racks
Academic Year 3 Take up 1,372 racks
Staffing Plan
Initial steps – Recommendation
If established quickly the group would be in a strong position to capitalise on the existing momentum and take
forward the engagement work both with suppliers and the sector itself, generating sector engagement and
commencing procurement/partnership discussions with commercial organisations; a solid communications
and PR plan will be critical to delivering the substantive take-up required to be successful. This would also
mitigate the major risk that institutions proceed with their own plans as they are currently lacking any
substantive alternative. Such investments are medium to long term, causing significant additional costs for the
sector into the future and also potentially limiting the impact of other shared services initiatives.
The recommendation is that a working group is established who will oversee the creation and
operationalisation of the new service. This group, which would be lead by JANET, would include
representatives of HEFCE and relevant sector organisations. A second recommendation is that HEFCE initially
fund this group and the resources (consultant support) necessary to complete the following tasks:
1) Benchmarking and understanding current provision, segmenting the market and substantiating
assumptions;
2) Identifying organisations looking to migrate services relatively rapidly, creating potential migration
models. As part of this study it is clear that a number of organisations have a need to move quickly
and are looking for this opportunity;
3) Identifying services that can be implemented relatively rapidly to achieve quick wins for the service
and quick, measurable returns for the sector;
4) Complete a detailed service specification;
5) Approach the commercial supply market with a clearly defined proposition for initial new services;
6) Define and put in place recruitment plans and so on for the new service plus develop a detailed
governance model.