A presentation given at the Cloudscape IV conference in Brussels, Belgium during February 2012.

1. Image: buck82 @ Flickr
UK university adoption of
‘shared’ cloud services
Andy Powell, Eduserv
www.eduserv.org.uk/research
twitter.com/andypowe11
Cloudscape-IV, Belgium
February 2012

2. Some context…
/ 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)
Image: Swamibu @ Flickr

3. UK HEFCE/JISC UMF
/ 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
Image: Lieven SOETE @ Flickr

4. 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)
Image: Ian Sane @ Flickr

5. 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
Image: Bashed @ Flickr

6. Looking forward…
Image: katieb50 @ Flickr

7. Thank you
Image: Duncan~ @ Flickr