My guest lecture for Loughborough University's Centre for Global Sourcing and Services in December 2015. I discuss the underlying dynamics around the shift to cloud, and areas where communities can come together to avoid duplicating effort and achieve economies of scale - with some examples from Jisc's recent activities. I also look at the strategic directions identified in our recent future of cloud computing report and think tank.

1. Cloud & community – the future of shared IT services
Martin Hamilton
Photo credit: CC-BY-SA Flickr: user Perspecsys PhotosLoughborough University Centre for Global Sourcing and Services - guest lecture

2. Cloud and community
1. About Jisc
– Who are we and what do we do?
2. Cloud computing redux
– What do we really mean by “cloud”?
– What is the potential for cloud in research and education?
3. What’s next?
– What would Google do?
– IT as innovation in technology

3. 1. About Jisc
Loughborough University Centre for Global Sourcing and Services - guest lecture

4. 1. About Jisc
Jisc is the UK higher education, further education and
skills sectors’ not-for-profit organisation for digital
services and solutions.This is what we do:
› Operate shared digital infrastructure and services
for universities and colleges
› Negotiate sector-wide deals, e.g. with IT vendors
and commercial publishers
› Provide trusted advice and practical assistance

5. 1. About Jisc
Jisc is the UK higher education, further education and
skills sectors’ not-for-profit organisation for digital
services and solutions.This is what we do:
› Operate shared digital infrastructure and services
for universities and colleges
› Negotiate sector-wide deals, e.g. with IT vendors
and commercial publishers
› Provide trusted advice and practical assistance

6. 1. About Jisc
Jisc is the UK higher education, further education and
skills sectors’ not-for-profit organisation for digital
services and solutions.This is what we do:
› Operate shared digital infrastructure and services
for universities and colleges
› Negotiate sector-wide deals, e.g. with IT vendors
and commercial publishers
› Provide trusted advice and practical assistance

7. 1. About Jisc
Jisc is the UK higher education, further education and
skills sectors’ not-for-profit organisation for digital
services and solutions.This is what we do:
› Operate shared digital infrastructure and services
for universities and colleges
› Negotiate sector-wide deals, e.g. with IT vendors
and commercial publishers
› Provide trusted advice and practical assistance

8. 1. About Jisc
In the
UK
there
is…
470Colleges providing
further
education
160Higher education
institutions
2.3m
Students in HE
4.9m
Learners in FE
23%
Postgraduate
77%
Undergraduate
Funding for FE and skills
£7.7bn
Income of HEIs
£30.7bn
1,085
Providers of further
education and
skills

9. 1. About Jisc
› Doing more,
for less

10. 1. About Jisc
› Janet network
[Image credit: Dan Perry]

11. 1. About Jisc
Netflix
Voicenet
Akamai
Virgin Radio
Bogons
Logicalis UK
Pipex / GXN
BBC
Datahop
InTechnology
INUK
Simplecall
LINX multicast
Gamma
Google
Simplecall
Redstone
Updata
aql
Voicenet
Google
Limelight
Limelight
Akamai
BTnet
Init7
Amazon
Microsoft EU (viaTN)
Telekom Malaysia
Globelynx
10Gbit/s
1Gbit/s
100Gbit/s
GÉANT
GÉANT+
LINX
Microsoft EU (viaTW)
Total external connectivity ≈ 1Tbit/s
Leeds
Akamai
Google
VM for LGfLInTechnology
NHS N3
Exa Networks
Synetrix BBC (HD 4K pilots)
One Connect
Glasgow
&
Edinburgh
HEAnet
BBC (Pacific Quay)
Gamma
BBC (HD 4K pilots)
NHS N3
SWAN (Glas)
SWAN (Edin)
Manchester
Telecity
Harbour
Exch.
Telehouse
North &
West
VM for LGfL
RM for Schools
VM for LGfL
RM for Schools
GlobalTransit
Tata
IXManchester
IXLeeds
GlobalTransit
Level3
GlobalTransit
Level3

12. 1. About Jisc
Equipment sharing
› Brokered industry access to £60m
public investment in HPC
› Working with EPSRC to pilot the
Kit-Catalogue software, sharing
details of 1,000s of items of high
value equipment
› Newcastle University alone is
sharing £16m+ of >£20K value
equipment
Photo credit: HPC Midlands
http://bit.ly/jiscsharing

13. 1. About Jisc
Janet Reach:
› £4M funding from BIS to work
towards a Janet which is "open and
accessible" to industry
› Provides industry access to university
e-infrastructure facilities to facilitate
further investment in science,
engineering and technology with the
active participation of business and
industry
› Modelled on Innovate UK
competition process
bit.ly/janetreach

14. 1. About Jisc
Janet Reach:
› £4M funding from BIS to work
towards a Janet which is "open and
accessible" to industry
› Provides industry access to university
e-infrastructure facilities to facilitate
further investment in science,
engineering and technology with the
active participation of business and
industry
› Modelled on Innovate UK
competition process
bit.ly/jischpc

15. 1. About Jisc
www.jisc.ac.uk/shared-data-centre

16. 1. About Jisc
www.jisc.ac.uk/about/vat-cost-sharing-group
VAT Cost Sharing
Group
› Largest in UK
(we believe)
› 93% of HEIs
› 256 institutions
participating

17. 1. About Jisc
www.jisc.ac.uk/financial-x-ray
Financial X-Ray
› Easily understand and compare
overall costs for particular
services
› Develop business cases for
changes to IT infrastructure
› Mechanism for dialogue
between finance and IT
departments
› Highlight comparative cost of
shared and commercial third
party services

18. 2. Cloud computing redux
Loughborough University Centre for Global Sourcing and Services - guest lecture

19. 2. Cloud computing redux
Photo CC-BY Jisc, from an original by Phil Wolff

20. 2. Cloud computing redux
Photo CC-BY-NC-ND Flickr user m0php
› New products and services
are increasingly being
created “cloud first”
› For small firms and sole
traders this can be a boon.
Say goodbye to:
– Servers under desks
– Elusive “consultants”
– Lost passwords
› Access to world class
infrastructure
– New skillset required + new
approach to costing IT

21. 2. Cloud computing redux
Photo CC-BY-NC-ND Flickr user m0php
› New products and services
are increasingly being
created “cloud first”
› For small firms and sole
traders this can be a boon.
Say goodbye to:
– Servers under desks
– Elusive “consultants”
– Lost passwords
› Access to world class
infrastructure
– New skillset required + new
approach to costing IT

22. 2. Cloud computing redux
Jisc brokered cloud deals: Google Apps for Education
» The University of Westminster estimates that it saved £1m by moving to Google Apps for
Education for email and other online collaboration facilities. They also state that “an additional
benefit has been the reduced time spent in systems and user support with a minimal number of
calls for support for such a significant system”, and that moving to the cloud has “liberated staff and
students from the smaller storage limits of the previous in-house solution.”
http://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/univofwestminster.pdf
» Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College have also migrated to Google Apps.They observe
that “each year, 20,000 new accounts are created providing 600 terabytes (around 150,000
DVDs worth) of storage in less than five minutes.” Subsequently to this article being written,
Google moved to offering free unlimited storage.
http://www.wlc.ac.uk/college/news/article.asp?newsID=4228

23. 2. Cloud computing redux
Jisc brokered cloud deals: Microsoft Office365
» The University of theWest of London moved its 14,000 students to Office365, and observes that
once a student graduates “they can maintain that Office365 account through the University for
life.We can continue to supply them with information about the University, help them find their
second job, their third job and so on.This isn’t just about collaboration while studying, it’s about
creating a life-long connection between the students and the University.”
http://www.slideshare.net/Microsofteduk/university-of-west-london-case-study-office-365
» The University of Dundee migrated all of its 22,000 student accounts to Microsoft’s Office365 for
Education service over a week.They note that this was achieved with zero down time, and estimate
that Office365 “will save us at least £500,000 in infrastructure and staffing over five years.”
http://www.slideshare.net/Microsofteduk/university-of-dundee-case-study-office-365
» Now over 100 UK universities using Office365

24. 2. Cloud computing redux
Dogfooding
› We moved
our own core
infrastructure
to AWS
› Estimate that
this saved
>£100K p.a.
› Cloud first /
mobile first
for new stuff
[Image credit:
Mike Jones]

25. 2. Cloud computing redux
› Amazon Web Services cost calculator

26. 2. Cloud computing redux
Jisc’s Amazon cloud portal:
› Monthly invoicing - credit cards are no longer
required for payment
› Itemized billing - consolidated across
users/departments
› Billing inGBP, not dollars
› Setting of budget limits for individual user
accounts or departments
› The retrieval of service usage information within
own areas of responsibility
› Volume-discounts through aggregation across
multiple educational institutions

27. 2. Cloud computing redux
https://community.jisc.ac.uk/blogs/regulatory-developments

28. 2. Cloud computing redux
https://community.jisc.ac.uk/blogs/regulatory-developments

29. 2. Cloud computing redux
https://community.jisc.ac.uk/blogs/regulatory-developments

30. 2. Cloud computing redux
Think tank feedback:
› Actual and perceived cost issues
around public cloud, e.g. egress
charging versus anecdotal evidence
around “credit card professors”
› Institutions and funders struggling
with shift from capex to opex – RCUK
CloudWG will look at research view
› Need to raise awareness of shared
responsibility for security, role of IT
department to facilitate
Amazon, Microsoft and Google at the cloud think tank

31. 2. Cloud computing redux
Open questions from Jisc’s recent cloud survey:
› 29% of the CIOs responding to our survey told us that they had no
plans to use public cloud to support research at their institutions
› 31% indicated that they were reluctant to move business
systems to the cloud
› 61% of respondents said that financial aspects of cloud
computing were a major concern
We are aiming to address these points in Jisc’s Cloud Strategy.

32. 3. What’s next?
Loughborough University Centre for Global Sourcing and Services - guest lecture

33. 3. What’s next?
Three big ideas in our future of cloud report:
› Cloud as a utility
› App as a Service
› Building capability
Read the report: bit.ly/jisccloudfutures

34. › Cloud as a utility
“Our key recommendation is
that Jisc should work with the
sector and public cloud providers
to make it easier for
institutions to switch between
cloud providers and to migrate
workloads between the public
and private clouds – leveraging
public investment in the Janet
network.”
3. What’s next?

35. 3. What’s next?
http://science.energy.gov/~/media/ascr/pdf/program-
documents/docs/Magellan_Final_Report.pdf
› Cloud as a utility

36. › Cloud as a utility
3. What’s next?
http://science.energy.gov/~/media/ascr/pdf/program-
documents/docs/Magellan_Final_Report.pdf

37. › App as a Service
“Smartphones and tablets have
established a culture of ‘package
once, install a billion times’, but
our colleges and universities
still commonly package
common applications
separately and independently
for distribution to users.This is
inefficient and it diverts highly
skilled IT staff from activities
that could genuinely add value.”
3. What’s next?
See http://blog.martinh.net/2011/11/post-pc-manifesto.html

38. 3. What’s next?
› App as a Service

39. 3. What’s next?
› App as a Service

40. 3. What’s next?
› App as a Service

41. 3. What’s next?
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/11/07/ce
rns-openstack-cloud-to-reach-150000-cores-by-2015/
› Building capability
“It is clear from the results of the
Jisc cloud survey that practice
with established cloud
technologies is still quite
variable. We believe that there is
a need to come together to
share our experiences of what
works, building capability at
institutions and identifying areas
where further intervention
would be helpful.”

42. 3. What’s next?
http://www.datanami.com/2013/09/23/cern_turns_to_google_for_datacenter_direction/
› Building capability

43. 3. What’s next?
IT = Innovation inTechnology
› Conventional wisdom: IT as a cost centre
– Is that howTesco and Amazon see it?
› Can you be replaced with a robot?
– Or an outsourcerer / shared service / SaaS / …
› What do (or can) you do that gives your
organization a unique advantage?
– May not be what you are doing now 
› What do you need to learn or unlearn?
– Discuss!
Photo credit:CC-BY-NC
Flickr user Rain Rabbit

44. 3. What’s next?
Example: AutonomousVehicles
› Capability:
– Do we have it in house?
– If not: build, buy or broker?
– New model or updated? Retrofit?
› Capacity:
– Can we do it at scale?
– How do we respond to changes in demand?
› Sector specific:
– Shift from buying cars to: renting them, Uber
Photo CC BY-NC-SA Flickr user traftery
Photo credit: Google

45. That’s all folks…
Except where otherwise noted, this
work is licensed under CC-BY
Martin Hamilton
Futurist, Jisc, London
@martin_hamilton
martin.hamilton@jisc.ac.uk
Loughborough University Centre for Global Sourcing and Services - guest lecture