Data Centre Strategy. Data Centre Services for the Higher Education Sector

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1 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

2 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. March 2010 page 2

3 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 Delivery Model Governance Model Outcomes & transformations Scope Next Steps Service Menu Sustainability Funding Requirements Staff Resources Non-Staff Resources Service Costs Implementation Plan Proposed Project Phasing Sample Target Measurement Staffing Plan Initial steps scoping exercise March 2010 page 3

4 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 7 th December 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. ( March 2010 page 4

5 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 , 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. March 2010 page 5

6 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 Salford, Derby, Leicester 100M over 15 years for Russell Group alone (assuming only half the equivalent benefit is applicable across the sector) 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) 220 M 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 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 March 2010 page 6

7 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 ICTrelated 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. March 2010 page 7

8 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. March 2010 page 8

9 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. March 2010 page 9

10 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. March 2010 page 10

11 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. March 2010 page 11

12 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. March 2010 page 12

13 Benefit Detail 10 Year saving Release of Staff Time Release Management Time Professional Expertise of Release of Real Estate Reduction Power Costs Risk Reduction Operational Savings Virtualisation Consolidation Virtualisation Benefits of 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). 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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. Taking the YHMAN report and extrapolating across the sector, however assuming 50% overlap with operational savings and power cost reduction 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. 100 M 20 M Income generation rather than direct savings Income generation rather than direct savings 450 M Service quality improvement 220 M 100 M New performance opportunity Total savings to the sector 890 M high March 2010 page 13

14 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. 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. March 2010 page 14

15 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. March 2010 page 15

16 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 March 2010 page 16

17 Non-Staff Resources Staff will requires standard facilities, computing, travel and other operating overheads, this has been estimated at equal to staff costs. Service Costs Provision and operating = 1,350,000 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/ ,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 selfsustaining. Proposed Project Phasing March 2010 page 17

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: Staffing Plan Academic Year 1 Take up 196 racks Academic Year 2 Take up 784 racks Academic Year 3 Take up 1,372 racks 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. March 2010 page 18