Oxford Nexus: a future in the cloud?

Transcription

1 Oxford Nexus: a future in the cloud? Lyn Waddington IT Services Tuesday 24 March 2015

2 What is a hybrid or a cloud service? A cloud service is one provided by a third party in in a highly replicated, shared infrastructure with other customers (offsite) Google Apps, Office 365, or Dropbox are all cloud services Hybrid in this case means some provided on site by existing team and some in the cloud for example Staff onsite, Students in the cloud Currently our Nexus services ( and SharePoint) are run on site

3 The Cloud Communication and Collaboration Evaluation Project (C3E) C3E; tasked to consider whether it was desirable or possible to move Nexus services into the cloud Multiple stakeholders were consulted via interviews, workshops, online survey Options considered: cloud, hybrid, on premise The two best known; Google Apps for education (G4AE) and Office365 (O365) were researched and assessed for fit to user requirements as exemplars

4 The main differences between cloud and onsite provision Support and some backend functions Backup and retention policies Cost Data and Security concerns However, little/no difference for user experience between O365/Outlook

5 Summary Nexus performance vs O365 Onsite better for migration and support Offsite lower carbon footprint and better integration with other Microsoft products Full analysis available in report

6 Security and data considerations A subgroup was set up to address this issue There is a strong perception that all data must be held on site Some require UK, others within the EU some do not stipulate There is a difference in requirements for dealing with and stored data The University has established a working group to document best practice and these differences

7 Security and data considerations There is a difference in requirements for dealing with and stored data To meet some use cases (eg NHS) a more secure solution must be provided, beyond existing or future cloud offerings All agreed this is not in scope for C3E Nexus SharePoint, if retained onsite, would meet stored data requirements for the University

8 For further consideration Assessing of the cost of devolved support compared to current local support Current backup methods improved to allow users easy access to restore single items How to enable easier access to external partners File share and sync services are being considered as part of Storage as a Service (StaaS)

9 Early findings and recommendations It is estimated that there is a saving of 1.5 million over 5 years if we move to a full cloud based solution for A hybrid solution does not provide significant savings or additional benefits G4AE holds data anywhere in the world, therefore the focus for a deeper dive will be on O365. For a fuller explanation (see report) Next steps of project are to really assess the true costs & benefits of migration to O365 with a recommendation that SharePoint remains on site

10 QUESTIONS?

11 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

12 Requirement Number Requirements where Nexus out-scores Office 365 Requirement Description 48 The most sensitive or IP-valuable data is identified easily and kept on site 36 Good provision of restore of user data loss/accidental deletion 35 Sophisticated and easy options for migration in and (e)migration out of data 47 Maintenance windows of 2 hours per week or less and in quiet UK hours User support is good and planned downtime/disruptions are communicated 42 well Temporary outages at the server/cloud: will users be able to continue 41 working? 40 Internet latency: good service when Janet and the outside world is slow. Requirements where Microsoft Office 365 out-scores Nexus 45 Little on-site equipment required and low power consumption API for adding 'contacts' to the main University address book (e.g. for easy 29 links to maillists) From the options analysis report, see C3E SharePoint Site

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