Both sides, now - are we builders or users of services in the cloud?

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Andy Powell, Eduserv [email protected]

www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation

Both sides, now

Are we builders or users of services in the cloud?

September 2008ALT-C 2008 Sponsor Session 2

Joni Mitchell – Both sides, now

“I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down, and still somehow

It's cloud illusions I recall

I really don't know clouds at all”


we live in a rapidly changing environment


Web 2.0


services in the “cloud”


impact on the way universities deliver and consume services


impact on Eduserv


primary focus of this talk is Eduserv


but issues are pertinent to funding bodies, universities and individuals


what is Eduserv?


a charity


a somewhat unusual charity

(you won’t find us rattling tins on the high street)


income thru sale of services


an educational charity


“a not for profit IT services company”


what is our mission?


“to realise the benefits of ICT for learners, researchers and the institutions that serve

them”


where are we from?


Bath


the University of Bath


started in the pre-Web era


spun out of the University more than 10 years ago


spun out as a charity


seen as the best way of keeping our assets within the education community


what are we known for?


2 things primarily


1st thing we are known for…


Access and Identity Management

Athens

(centralised service funded partly by the JISC to provide single sign-on to bibliographic and other network services – still in

use by the NHS)


more recently evolved into a new product suite known as OpenAthens


outsourced “access and identity” solution for institutions and service providers


we handle the technology that allows institutions and service providers to join the UK Access

Management Federation


and other federations


“we support Shibboleth so you don’t have to”


but we also support other emerging “identity” standards…

SAML, OpenID and Information Cards


with the intention of future-proofing services to institutions and content providers


2nd thing we are known for…


Licence negotiation

Chest


the benefits of negotiating as a community


for software (and other stuff)


both Athens and Chest have been very successful


and have been provided in a sustainable way for the benefit of the community


Athens has been a highly reliable part of the academic infrastructure for the last 10 years or

so


we also do Web hosting, CMS and bespoke Web development


sometimes for the education sector


but mainly for the wider public sector


again, very successfully


success is what makes us sustainable and cost-effective – in delivering services we tend to

generate operating surpluses


those surpluses are given back to the community (because we are a charity)


which we do mainly thru our programme of research grants


managed by the Eduserv Foundation


which is where I come in


we are a small funding body


up to £.5M a year (but typically less in actual grants)


typically, we fund 3 research projects per year


where each project is equivalent of 1 FTE


for example


last year, we funded 4 projects related to Second Life


Sloodle

(Dan Livingstone, University of West of Scotland)


Learning from Virtual Worlds, Teaching in Second Life

(Diane Carr, London Knowledge Lab)


Theatron

(Hugh Dennard, KCL – though currently being managed by Mark Childs)


Modelling 4 All

(Ken Kahn, University of Oxford)

(not really Second Life at all)


and this year…


not announced yet


but


I’ll tell you anyway


3 projects


Creating a W3C Standard for Open Social Networking Data

(Harry Halpin, University of Edinburgh)


Rhizome: exploring strands of online identity in learning, teaching and research

(Steven Warburton, KCL)


This is me

(Shirley Williams, University of Reading)

(small grant)


all in the area of social networks and identity on the Web

(open standards and digital literacy)


we also do other stuff


an annual symposium and other meetings


work on interoperability standards


advice on good practice in areas like metadata, middleware, elearning, virtual worlds, Web 2.0, open access, copyright, information literacy, …


but…


but…


we’ve increasingly come to realise that


associating our grant-giving with the “Foundation” brand tends to dilute the overall

charitable brand of Eduserv


the “value” of grant-giving minimal in comparison to “value” of services


and small scale of grant-giving makes it difficult to ensure impact and “value for money”

(in the way that JISC can for example)


particularly when we try and focus on education generally


as a result we are beginning to think differently


new focus on delivering “services” to “higher education”


with the intention of offering large-scale, resilient, sustainable “data centre” capability

(rack-space and managed hosting)


offering hosted “services”, a “cloud” platform, identity management solutions and licence

negotiation (including SaaS)


but in order to do that properly

we need to understand your requirements

(that means you)


more importantly, we need to understand whether we can do this sustainably in an

environment where existing Web 2.0 services and infrastructure are free/very cheap


what kinds of “services”?


we don’t know yet, but…

data repositories, portfolio, assessment, storage infrastructure, high-performance computing,

virtual world hosting (e.g. OpenSim), …


will you still do Web hosting and CMS type solutions?

yes


will you still do licence negotiation?

yes


will you still do access and identity management (OpenAthens)?

yes


will you still work with the wider public sector and other areas of education?

yes (because that work helps make us sustainable and cost-effective but our primary focus will be HE)


will you still give research grants?


yes… probably… but they’ll probably be a bit different


“work with us to improve our services”

rather than

“here’s some money to do something interesting”


the fundamental question is


can we (by which I really mean the wider education community) deliver these kinds of

services sustainably…


…in a Web 2.0, SaaS, “cloud” world in which lots of very good looking stuff is made available for

free or very cheaply?

can we (by which I really mean the wider education community) deliver these kinds of

services sustainably…


thank you

Both sides, now - are we builders or users of services in the cloud?

Education