Transcript IT EFFICIENCY & COLLEGE EFFECTIVENESS: MAKING CLOUD COMPUTING WORK FOR YOU Robin Gadd Head of Information and Systems Development.

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
We
do education
and training outstandingly well
(international)
catchment
notper
anannum,
IT service
provider
 c.11,000We’re
learners
14-104
years old,
(although
hard to do
this outstandingly
well too!)
pre-entrywe
to try
foundation
degree
level, and a preschool nursery
 c.200 key employers (mainly SMEs)

Beacon College since 2004
 Technology Exemplar Provider since 2008

TECHNOLOGY HYPE CYCLE 2010 (GARTNER)
Gartner: Cloud computing is “the most
hyped subject in IT today”!!
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1447613
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!
spend more
 Most servers run at 5-20% of processing capacity
money
at the frontline of teaching
 Even virtualised servers get nowhere near 100%
and
 Data redundancy
andlearning?
security

Variable
asset utilization
Or maybe
we could
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
CLOUD COMPUTING IS…
“a model for enabling convenient, on-demand
network access to a shared pool of configurable
“Technology
delivered
computing
resourcesservices
(e.g., networks,
servers,
storage, applications,
and
services) that can be
over the
internet”
rapidly provisioned and released with minimal
management effort or service provider interaction”.
(US National Institute of Standards and Technology)
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 STORAGE
One 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
Example Project: Digital Media for Teaching and Learning
In College (Mostly Capex)
 450gb Disks - £25k
(7TBs = 16 disks @ £1.5k)
In The Cloud (Mostly Opex)
 Elastic Storage - £3.5k pa
(7TBs
stored incrementally
by end of
I’m
not
the
FD,
but
these
numbers
 Disk Array - £7k
year @ $0.125 /GB)
(big enough to hold up to 90 disks
look interesting!
in 3-4 years if necessary!)
 Elastic Bandwidth - £1.1k pa


Total Year 1 = £32k
28TB by year 4 = £107k
+ on-going Opex (maintenance,
staff, backup disks & tapes, software
licences, aircon, power etc)
+ hardware refresh
(1TB /mth @ $0.150 /GB)

Total Year 1 = £4.6k

28TB by year 4 = £18.4k
CASHFLOW, ROI, AND CAPACITY PLANNING
£32k
Capex
invested
+£25k
Capex
invested
+£25k
Capex
invested
+£25k
Capex
invested
>£100k invested, but still not enough!
Elastic
investment
as demand
grows (or
contracts)
CLOUD STUDENT/ALUMNI EMAIL
One extra program
installed on an
existing (virtual)
server to synchronise
user identities with
the Live ID cloud
service
Exchange
Server(s)
Typical in-College infrastructure
MORE QUALITY AND LESS COST!
In Cloud Service Level
In College Service Level
 Inbox (10GB)
 Inbox (200MB)
 Online file store (25GB)
 Network file store (200MB)
 Anti-virus and anti-spam
 Lost USB sticks galore
you have
Microsoft
get the connector
working easily!)
 Email
for life (alumni?)
(providing
No external
mail
send systems and can
 An experience that meets
 No system redundancy
expectations
 A mediocre experience
 High usage
 Low usage
£££
£££
 Free!
 Hardware, software, anti Fewer servers, less software,
virus, backup, DR
reduced maintenance
 Maintenance & support
No brainer?
The next evolution of Live@Edu... Due in 2011
Office Online (Word, Excel etc) connected to
and delivered with cloud services
 Exchange Online - cloud-based e-mail, calendar
and
contactsscalable,
with the mostup-to-date
current anti-virus
Highly
tech
and
anti-spamplatform
solutions
A strong
for innovation
 But
Office
Online
- cloud-based
will SharePoint
it be sufficiently
cost effective?
Wait and see…
asynchronous virtual learning, shared file stores
etc
 Lync Online - cloud-based synchronous online
teaching with text messenger, presence, screen
sharing, voice and video conferencing

SO DO WE STILL NEED ON-CAMPUS IT?
Yes. Some.
 PCs, printers, networking, high-end media



A data
centre
development


But different ownership models; different support
models;
utility
computing;
thin clients
What
are
the organisational
implications?
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?
GREY CLOUDS – RISKS?

Our data is somewhere “out there”?


Where in the world is our stuff?


Service/support; uptime guarantees (with financial
penalties?); technical support; time zones?
Partners


Lots
of due regulatory
diligence
needed!
Legal
jurisdictions?
compliance;
data
protection? £-$ exchange?
SLAs


Security; public or private cloud? is the door locked?
Trust; reliability
Single points of failure?

JANET connection: capacity/cost; redundancy?
FLUFFY WHITE CLOUDS – OPPORTUNITIES!

Expenditure management

Spending less; shared/managed services; fewer fixed
costs; elastic capacity; moving Capex → Opex;
enhanced cashflow
down from the
 Gettingof
more
service/capacity;
providing better
“peak
inflated
expectations”,
we
services to our customers
might reach that “plateau of
 Innovation and agility
productivity”
inopportunities
2 years!!change;
 The world
changes; IT changes;

If we join
the ride
Quality
improvement
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
CONCLUSION: THE BOTTOM LINE
Nick Carr was right!
 Most computing is now
a “utility” – we can’t
live Cloud
without IT,
but “IT
Computing
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
CAN help!
THANK YOU!
[email protected]