The Progression of Cloud Computing
in Further Education Colleges
A study based on Cloud Technology projects managed by the
Association of Colleges and funded by the Skills Funding
Agency - 2012 - 2013
November 2013
Contents
1. Executive Summary
2. Introduction
3. Summary of Findings
4. Project Outcomes
4.1 Student and other Relationship Management in the Cloud
4.2 Finance, HR and payroll Services in the Cloud
4.3 Disaster Recovery in the Cloud
4.4 Employer/Business Focused Applications in the Cloud
4.5 Learner Focused Applications in the Cloud
4.6 Virtual Learning Environment (VLEs) in the Cloud
4.7 E-mail and Storage in the Cloud
For each of the above areas:
- Needs and Opportunities
- The Projects
- Similarities and Differences
- Details of Delivery Models, Supplier Relationships, Service Level
Agreements, Project and Change Management, Impact, Savings, Sustainabilty
and Expected Longer Term Impact, Replicability
Executive Summary
This report describes the early experiences of 34 projects in planning and implementing the movement of selected IT applications to the cloud. It should be of value to Colleges who are considering moving applications to the cloud.
The report highlights the emerging benefits of moving to the cloud. It identifies the risks and the mitigation strategies to manage these. It shows the potential of cloud technology to meet College stakeholders’ rapidly increasing demands for IT capacity, complexity and accessibility.
The report provides a snapshot of experiences to date including early impact. The full impact of these projects will be evident in the coming months, with a follow-up research report being developed during 2014. The current report shows how Colleges are:
using cloud technology to develop Student and Other Stakeholder Relationship Management Systems in the Cloud, which integrate web applications, CRM and MIS applications. These systems provide key information to learners and record their engagement with the College from the point of enquiry onwards. This also informs parents and employers;
increasing their business efficiency through developing Finance, HR and Payroll Services in the Cloud, which enable self-service access by Curriculum Managers as well as Finance Staff; meeting the business-critical demands of Disaster Recovery in the Cloud through agreements with cloud data centre providers and processes which include data encryption and
consideration of the location of data centres;
supporting the needs of employers and learners through the development of
Employer-/Business-Focused Applications in the Cloud, such as by supporting, tracking and recording work-based learning using Google Apps;
supporting anywhere/anytime learning through developing Learner-Focused Applications in the Cloud, such as virtual desktops, Google Apps and mobile learning;
migrating Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) to the Cloud, to support increased access and flexibility for learners and collaborative working between Colleges to share learning resources;
migrating Email and Storage to the Cloud, to provide greater resilience, improved access and flexibility, such as through the use of Google Mail or Microsoft Office 365.
As an overview, many of these projects are already reporting savings and these will be reviewed again in the coming months. For some, improved service is seen as the significant benefit. Colleges have experienced some challenges in upgrading their bandwidth to the levels required by their applications. Valuable experience has been gained in supplier selection including selecting cloud hosting and specialist IT partners. Some common challenges have been identified in migrating to 365 and with authentication issues generally. Experiences have been shared by Colleges who have implemented single sign-on facilities.
Some projects address increased access to learning for those with physical or learning disabilities. Many of these projects are replicable in other Colleges. A number of projects are part of Shared Service approaches, where the development costs, overheads and benefits are shared by a group of
Colleges. These Colleges work to a common set of business standards and processes.
A number of Colleges have emphasised the importance of using formal project management methodologies.
This report illustrates initial findings and is naturally limited by the information available at this point in time. Many projects are ongoing and will be reviewed into 2014. The Association of Colleges (AoC) has captured information over the lifetime of the programme and further detail can be found on the AoC Policy section of the website (www.aoc.co.uk/cloud_computing). The report concludes with some areas of desirable further research. This includes the need for forensic studies of IT costs in Colleges.
Introduction
As cloud technologies matured, and as government departments and agencies began to adopt cloud services, an increasing number of suppliers began to enter the market with the result that rate of adoption of cloud technologies began to increase. One result of this trend was that funding became available to allow publicly funded organisations to respond to the opportunities presented by the cloud.
The Collaboration and Shared Services Board, established by the Department for Business
Innovation and Skills (BIS), allocated £1million for cloud projects from the Shared Services Grant Fund, managed by AoC. The aim of the Board was to progress cloud computing in Colleges through the provision of funding of a range of projects.
Colleges were invited to bid for individual projects by completing an Invitation to Tender (ITT) that had been written by AoC and other partners in the Shared Services project. The ITT allowed Colleges to bid for project funding provided they met the definitions of SaaS or IaaS described below. The ITTs were assessed by independent experts, the AoC Innovation Committee and the Shared Services Board, before contracts were drawn up for the successful applicants.
A total of 36 bids were selected covering a range of projects
involving Colleges and commercial suppliers. 34 projects are now running, with two that did not go ahead; these projects are being managed by the AoC project management team.
The context within which the projects described in this study were commissioned, funded and managed is the rapid uptake of cloud services in the public and private sectors over the last five years. In 2008, an article in The Economist noted that, ‘The rise of the cloud is more than just another platform shift that gets geeks excited. It will undoubtedly transform the information technology industry, but it will also profoundly change the way people work and companies operate’1, a statement that made clear that the maturing of cloud technologies would go on to transform business processes and have a significant impact on the economy.
The trend to the widespread adoption of cloud technologies was given further impetus by the publication of the Coalition Government’s ICT strategy in 2011. The development of the
Government’s ‘G-cloud’ would, it was argued, improve efficiency, resilience and security because,
“Cloud computing delivers infrastructure, platform or software as a utility service, giving government the capability to respond to changing operational needs. The standardised cloud platform will also allow developers, especially SMEs, to generate innovative solutions.”2
1 ‘Special Report on Corporate IT’, (The Economist, 2008)
Area Number of Projects
Student and Other Stakeholder Relationship Management in
the Cloud 3
Finance, HR and Payroll Services in the Cloud 2
Disaster Recovery 4
Employment / Business Focused Applications in the Cloud 3 Learner Focused Applications in the Cloud 9 Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) in the Cloud 7 E-mail and Storage in the Cloud 9
Delivery Model
Supplier Relationships
Project and Change Management Service Level Agreements
Impact Savings
Sustainability and Anticipated Impact Replicability
The purpose of this report is to review the progress of cloud computing in Further Education (FE) Colleges. This is based on the development projects which were managed by AoC and funded by the SFA from 2012 onwards.
The projects are divided into two categories:
Software as a Service (SaaS) when software and its associated data are hosted centrally by the cloud computing provider and the organisation accesses it when and where required.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) when a College effectively outsources the IT equipment used to support operations. This includes storage, hardware, servers and network components. 29 projects were funded in the Software as a Service category and five in the Infrastructure as a Service category. In practice, some projects fall into both categories.
Colleges have complemented this funding with their own resources to plan and deliver projects which meet their specific needs.
This approach has enabled the FE and sixth form College sector to gain valuable experience of a wide variety of ways of implementing cloud computing. The Colleges involved have reported the gained and expected benefits and the challenges encountered.
The projects address the following areas within a College’s operations:
A number of projects are in more than one category.
Due to the differing nature of these projects, some projects have reached completion, whilst others are still in progress. In most cases, impact and savings can only be reported fully after an
appropriate period. Some of the findings in this report are therefore indicative and will be updated at a later date.
The findings are based on progress reports which Colleges have submitted at appropriate intervals as well as presentations at workshops and conferences.
The projects represent a rich variety of approaches. Where similarities and differences in findings exist, these have been identified.
Key Findings
Overall BenefitsThis study has identified a range of clear benefits in Colleges moving selected IT services to the cIoud in the form of:
Increased flexibility
Greater and scalable capacity Agility and innovation
Enabling a College to focus on front-line business, outsourcing what doesn’t have added value
Significant savings on staff time and equipment
The facility to move significant IT capital expenditure to operating expenditure
Risk and Mitigation
“Cloud computing is a disruptive and change technology.”
Tim Marshall, CEO, JANET and Executive Director, Technology and Infrastructure JISC at the AoC Cloud Technology Conference, 11 June 2013.
This brings a range of risks which need to be analysed and appropriate mitigation strategies devised:
Risk Mitigation
Percieved security of data in the cloud Data can be safer in the cloud if due attention is paid to:
Encryption of data
Service agreements with cloud hosting providers
Location of data where EU legal jurisdiction applies. JISC Legal is the authority on this. There is a single point of failure in respect
of the College link to the JANET network Ensuring appropriate band with capacity and resilience. AoC is working with BIS and JANET to secure investment in infrastructure
development to allow for an increase in bandwidth and the avoidance of a single point of failure for all Colleges.
Uncertainties in
financial implications Sound business planning incorporating demand forecasting and supply planning. Forensic studies of College IT costs.
Uncertainties in the activities involved in
moving a specific application to the cloud Use of robust project planning and control methodologies Use of other Colleges’ experiences
Work with shared services partnerships and College consortia
Uncertainties in how users will take to cloud
computing Robust training strategies Well-planned change management strategies Loss of control in working with other
Colleges in consortia or shared services partnerships
Ensure strong leadership buy-in Work with trusted partners
Debate and subscribe to common standards and processes
Underpin this with robust Service Level Agreements between the partnership and the partners
Detailed outcomes from Individual Projects
Cloud technology is being applied selectively in different areas. For each area the needs and opportunities have been summarised. The purpose of each project is described. Similarities and differences in approach and outcomes are highlighted. Detailed outcomes are documented in terms of:
Delivery Methods Supplier Relationships
Service Level Agreements
Project and Change Management Impact
Savings
Sustainability and Longer Term Impact Replicability
4.1 Student and Other Stakeholder Relationship Management in the Cloud
Needs and Opportunities
All Colleges have a need to manage their communications and relationships with students throughout their learning journey. This includes initial engagement in marketing to prospective students and recruiting them. Thereafter, it includes regular communication at many points in the learner journey and keeping a record of that engagement. This includes student engagement and achievement with learning programmes, their satisfaction and their destination. Once they have left the College there is an on-going need to engage students as alumni.
Communication and relationship management extends beyond students to parents and to
employers.
Communications and relationship activities, recording and reporting are often delivered on a range of disconnected websites, management information systems and customer relationship management systems. The range of devices through which students
Similarities
All projects focus on information provision to learners. Brockenhurst College and
Gloucestershire College offer personalised service benefits to learners and other stakeholders. Both Brockenhurst and Gloucestershire are longer term projects which are evolving to
include the different stakeholder sets – learners, staff, parents, employers.
Both are dependent on systems integration for example Brockenhurst with EBS and Gloucestershire with Unite-e.
Both are bespoke web based developments and have been developed in Microsoft environments.
can access and communicate key information regarding their learning journey is also limited. Cloud computing provides an opportunity to integrate the range of communications and
relationship management systems and to communicate with students and other stakeholders on devices of their choice.
The Projects
Three projects were commissioned in the Relationship Management Area. These projects represent a range of different approaches and perspectives.
Brockenhurst College’s project is a collaborative project run by the Wessex Federation. A
home-grown system, ‘Emily’ has played a critical role for nearly a decade now in driving forward the effectiveness of the College to recruit, support and retain their learners. Brockenhurst have now re-platformed in the cloud, using Microsoft Azure, to continue to support their learners in new, responsive and innovative ways.
Gloucestershire College’s project has been driven by the need for a single system to track and support learners on their journey onwards from first engaging with the College. This is now a much larger, more integrated and more medium term project than initially proposed. It is based on the development of a new cloud-based College website which will be integrated with
Microsoft Dynamics CRM in the cloud. It will enable the delivery of personalised services to learners, employers and other stakeholders as well as capturing data on learners from the point of enquiry onwards. The website is planned to be live from November 2013 with the CRM
component of the project following in February 2014. Gloucestershire College is already
successfully hosting Moodle in the cloud and using student email in the cloud through Microsoft 365.
City College Coventry’s project aims to support students and communicate critical information to them. This uses cloud mobile technology to deliver an HTML5 mobile app. This includes key campus & student union information, VLE & eILP access, e-library and QR scanning. The approach enables this information to be made available on a range of mobile devices – iPhone, Android etc without the need to develop platform specific apps. This includes use of a cloud Platform and access to the app through a number of app stores.
Delivery Modules
Brockenhurst/Wessex Education Shared Services: The delivery model used is Microsoft Azure, which enables the development of the software and its database to take place in the cloud (Infrastructure as a Platform) and the application to be hosted by Microsoft in the cloud (Infrastructure as a Service). Microsoft Azure enables the use of a wide range of Microsoft
Software in the cloud, which in turn enables Wessex Education Shared Services to build upon the well-developed Microsoft expertise of the team at Brockenhurst. There is a staff view of the information on the system. This includes all key information on students, their attendance and grades. All of this is linked to EBS which is synced as a feed to SQL server data in the cloud. The following diagram illustrates the system integration involved in this project:
Item Brockenhurst / Wessex Gloucestershire
Development resource In-house team Digital partners Savings Savings identified at £20K per
annum Service is key driver
Replication in other
Colleges Other Colleges in the shared service partnership could use the software once the Brockenhurst College specific elements are removed
The website is tailored to the College but the strategic approach is replicable
The student and parent portals enable them to view timetables and a range of other real-time information. Parents can see how their son/daughter is progressing, their attendance and where and when their exams are and the results. Putting this in the cloud has enabled the necessary scaling, particularly to provide a resilient service on exam results day where demand for access peaks considerably and abnormally.
Gloucestershire College: This is an integrated system comprising a cloud-based website hosted by Rackspace and Microsoft Dynamics CRM hosted by Microsoft. The system also includes links with College-hosted systems – UNIT-e, MIS, the Payment Gateway, Curriculum Planner (an in-house developed application) and the College intranet which is run on SharePoint. This is shown in the following diagram:
City College Coventry: The delivery model used is for cloud hosting of key College information services which can be accessed by students on a range of mobile devices through apps which are available from the apps stores of providers such as Apple.
The following screenshots indicate how the content of the app is displayed:
Supplier Relationships
Brockenhurst/Wessex Education Shared Services have built on the good relationships developed between Microsoft and Brockenhurst College to achieve a good working relationship with the Microsoft Azure Team.
Gloucestershire College: The digital partner is Gill Fox James with the website development carried out by Firehoop. The digital partner was selected through a tendering process.
City College Coventry: A key aspect of supplier relationships in this project is the need for the app to be accepted by service providers, such as Apple, to be included in their app stores.
Project and Change Management
The Brockenhurst/Wessex Education Shared Services project used formal project management tools and methodologies which included the Team Foundation service and Scrum. The project was well managed and the development phases were all completed on time and to the full
specification. Testing through the summer period when internet usage was comparatively light (while students and staff were away from College) proved very successful. However, once staff and students were using internet resources to the full extent during September it became clear that bandwidth could not be guaranteed to ensure that the user experience accessing cloud-based resources was consistently good enough. The cloud-based system works very well. The Azure platform is robust and reliable. Unfortunately any cloud-based strategy can only be as strong as the weakest link; in this case the bandwidth on the connection has proved to be the weak link and while an upgrade has been budgeted for and ordered, there is an extensive lead time to getting this installed and running.
management processes to follow for staff use of the system. The project is managed for the College by Gill Fox James according to the College’s specification. There is a small Systems Team which includes a systems developer who handles data issues and an internal web developer.
City College Coventry: The project management activities included a full consultation with students on the information which they would like included in the app.
SLAs
Brockenhurst/Wessex Education Shared Services: Service Level Agreements (SLAs) include agreements with Microsoft in respect of Azure and will increasingly involve SLAs between Colleges and Wessex Education Shared Services Ltd for on going support and further development.
Gloucestershire College: the main SLA is with the Digital Partner, Gill Fox James, who arranges SLAs with the web development and hosting
companies.
City College Coventry: SLAs include agreement for hosting and with app stores for app distribution.
Impact
Brockenhurst/Wesses Education
Shared Services: The impact is through: Supporting learners in new
responsive and innovative ways. Communicating effectively and efficiently with learners.
Improving individualised
marketing and applicant tracking. New ways of working and
tracking learners.
Development experience gained by project team.
Student impact is to be evaluated at end of project in October 2013 and will be made available via an AoC Technology Briefing.
Gloucestershire College: Impact will be evaluated in 2014. There has been a huge buy-in and support for the development of the project enabling detailed planning to take place in a very tight timescale. This has included positive input from stakeholder groups, senior management and Governors.
City College Coventry: The key outcome of the project is the genuine enagement
Savings
Brockenhurst/Wessex Education Shared Services: This is largely through savings in replacing College servers at £10k per year. Final information will be available in October 2013 on completion of evaluation. During the project no new server infrastructure (physical or virtual) has been
deployed on College premises. Traditionally at least one new server would have been purchased for an implementation of this sort, more likely two (data and applications delivered separately). The College can therefore estimate a cost avoidance to date of c£10,000 on hardware. In addition, support services for the infrastructure, including ensuring high availability during peak
examination results period have been avoided. The College can also estimate cost avoidance of c£10,000 on support team services.
Gloucestershire College: The College has invested in this ambitious project to enable a high level of personalised service to learners and other stakeholders. It is based on the premise of
“service not savings” and “better not cheaper”.
City College Coventry: To create a native mobile app on each platform would cost the College at least 50 development days per platform; for three platforms this would at least £75k.
“Access to College information portals for students is also available on the Mobile platform which should keep them up to data with College information and thereby increasing the College retention figures.”
Sustainability and expected longer term impact
Brockenhurst/Wessex Education Shared Services: The longer term impact will be in benefits to a wider set of Colleges who, in choosing to use this application through Wessex Education Shared Services, would benefit from the development that has taken place and cloud infra-structure that is available.
Gloucestershire College: The longer term impact will be to track and support students through their whole period of engagement with the College, from initial enquiry onwards. As the
implementation of the project progresses this will also apply to employer and other stakeholder engagement. Hosting the website in the cloud along with the CRM will enable energy savings.
City College Coventry: The app is sustainable in the College given the cloud hosting and app store distribution.
Replicablity for the Wider FE Sector
Brockenhurst/ Wessex Education Shared Services: The software can be used for other Colleges, following removal of features which are specific to Brockenhurst College. Other Colleges have expressed an interest in this
system.
Gloucestershire College: The strategy adopted by the College to specify needs and work with a digital partner to develop the project is replicable in any College. The website design is tailored to Gloucestershire College’s specific context but the structure would be applicable in other Colleges.
City College Coventry: Whilst the app is specific to the College, the development process could be replicated in other Colleges.
Similarities
Both projects, Isle of Wight and FE Sussex aim for service improvements which include self-service access in departments.
Both projects anticipate significant savings. FE Sussex £75000 and Isle of Wight £18000
4.2 Finance, HR and Payroll Services in the Cloud
Needs and Opportunities
The main need for the delivery of efficient finance, HR and payroll services in an FE College is to provide the highest level of service combined with maximum business efficiency. This involves accurate and timely recording and reporting services to the College management, governors and other stakeholders including staff. Delivery of services requires a high level of systems
functionality which, increasingly, includes self-service facilities for staff.
Cloud computing has the potential to support the maximisation of business efficiency by enabling users to access the latest software. Users, of course, are drawn from support and curriculum services.
If a shared service approach is also adopted, further efficiency gains can be achieved through single software purchases for a group of Colleges, adoption of a common set of business processes and shared use of IT and expertise.
The Projects
SISSC Ltd (Shared Services in Sussex and Surrey Colleges) comprises eight Colleges (three in Surrey and five in Sussex). It is allied to FE Sussex, a consortium of 12 post-16 Colleges in Sussex (six general FE, five sixth form and one land-based). The FE Sussex project, which is led by Northbrook College and delivered by FE Sussex and SISSC Ltd, involves the development and delivery of shared financial, HR, payroll and e-recruitment services across the Surrey and Sussex Colleges. At the time of writing, payroll services are going live in one College, with a progressive roll-out planned. The system has been tested extensively through parallel runs with historical data. A training programme is in place. Further updates on the success and impact of this project will be reported in updates of this report.
The Isle of Wight College Project is a single-College project based on running Symmetry, a finance system, in the cloud. This system went live in August/September 2013 with a roll-out to 35 staff members across College campuses. Evaluation of the use of the system will be reported in updates of this report.
Item FE Sussex Isle of Wight
Scale 8 Colleges 7000 users 1 College 20 users
Training and Culture change The most significant element of the project. Agreement and conformance to common business processes and standards.
Users are adapting well to the new system.
Technical Proceeding smoothly in a
staged manner. Initial challenges with getting Symmetry to work fully in the Cloud and with JANET band with
provision.
Replicability Can be used by any college
within the partnership. Can be used by other Symmetry users.
Differences
Delivery Models
FE Sussex: The delivery model for FE Sussex, as a shared services project, is cloud hosting of finance, HR and payroll applications software and databases, supported by the SISSC Ltd team. There is a single database for each application serving all Colleges, all of which are required to implement a common set of business processes.
Isle of Wight College: The delivery model for the Isle of Wight College is cloud hosting of Sym-metry software and the College finance database.
Supplier Relationships
FE Sussex: An OJEC tendering process was used for procurement. ULCC was selected as the hosting service, through a JISC-supported process. Risks in software procurement were minimised by using a system that has been proven in the University of Sussex and Northern Ireland Colleges.
Isle of Wight: Having selected Symmetry cloud, the two main supplier challenges encountered concerned the timing of the upgrade of the JANET connection and the need for further support from Symmetry to enable functionality of specific College-based reports.
Project and Change Management
FE Sussex: “Change management has been the biggest challenge of all!”
The human element is seen as more difficult to solve than any technical problem. Systematic recording of faults and changes to specification is essential.
A training programme has been put in place across the group of Colleges for 7000 users. This training has been around the new system and moving away from paper to an online system. This
in turn, it is felt, will lead to a change in culture over time through changes to working practices. The software has been set up and the main complexities were around configuration, ensuring that all was set up correctly, documenting all the
information in a configuration log and ensuring
continuity with staff over any issues and making sure these were logged.
Isle of Wight College:
“One of our most significant issues was the conflict between the need to run our existing services whilst trying to deploy a new system at the same time. All change management meetings were successful up until the testing phase. At this point, time pressures and frustrations with delays possibly caused us to pay less attention to the details than we should have done. Some reports were missed and silly things, such as the wrong logo being ported over on the reports, were not identified in a timely manner. This has led to issues being carried over into the final version that should have been resolved prior to the live version being deployed.”
During testing it was found that several critical reports did not work correctly and this required a significant amount of reprogramming by the Symmetry consultants.
“Once this work was completed, it was found that the reports were still not running correctly and as we were heading towards the end of the College financial year, we delayed the final handover until we could be sure that the system would work from day one. The Symmetry team provided a series of test versions until we agreed that they were working fine. The rollout of the new system was carried out overnight and we closed down the old server the same day to prevent any data crossover. Unlike FE Sussex, the human element has not been a significant problem. Most staff are using the system with little requirement for long training sessions and have been up and running fairly quickly. There are some areas where staff are having issues. These are being completed via individual trainings sessions and lessons learnt are being disseminated to other staff.”
SLAs
FE Sussex: This project involves extensive SLAs between specific Colleges and SISSC Ltd and between SISSC Ltd and ULCC, the software provider and JANET.
“Ensuring watertight agreements and a collaborative atmosphere mitigated the barriers.” Binding Solution Design Documents underpin the transition to the cloud for each application. Isle of Wight: The main SLA for this project is between the College and Symmetry, now Blueqube.
Impact
FE Sussex: Impact is continuously evaluated as Colleges become live on the system.
Isle of Wight College: Many staff have found the system easier to use and it is significantly faster to complete a lot of the finance processes than with the previous system. The ability to customise your own reports and to export to Excel has made budget monitoring much easier and quicker.
Savings FE Sussex:
“We will reduce in-College servers by ten at the end of this project. Each server costs
approximately £13,000 per annum to run and service. Hosting environment fees are less than half this. This will result in a £75,000 saving.”
Isle of Wight: The following savings have been identified:
£2,000 software upgrade costs will no longer be required in 2013/14.
£11,000 from modifications to our existing dashboard software installation that will no longer be needed 2013/14.
£2,000 annual consultancy costs. £3,000 hardware replacement costs.
Total projected savings £18,000.
Staff time will be saved in the following areas:
Report writing can be completed by local managers without recourse to the finance team. Requirement for specialist technical skills to support server-based issues will be reduced.
Sustainability and Expected Longer Term Impact
FE Sussex: Sustainability for the project is an integrated part of the business plan and SISSC will increase its reach as further Colleges and applications come on board.
Isle of Wight College:
“The Isle of Wight College is expecting the project to provide an improved financial system that will enable local managers to produce timely, relevant reports directly without the need to refer to finance staff. This will enable staff time to be used more efficiently whilst improving the quality of data to facilitate better decision making.”
Replicablity for the Wider FE Sector
FE Sussex: The ability to replicate the project in other Colleges in the group is in-built. There has been a high level of interest in the project from other Colleges who are keen to benefit from the savings the shared service can produce.
Isle of Wight College: The approach used here should be replicable for other single Colleges using Symmetry and general experience is of value to any College considering moving to a cloud-based solution for its financial system. The College journey will support replicability for any College moving a financial system to the cloud. Once completed, feedback will be given via the Finance Directors’ Network over issues we have experienced and how the implementation has benefitted our organisation. A case study will be completed. We anticipate inviting other
interested Colleges within our sector to a presentation day to share good practice and to discuss our experiences.
4.3 Disaster Recovery in the Cloud
Needs and Opportunities
There has always been a need in Colleges for robust disaster recovery services. The challenge of providing on-site or College-owned off-site back-up and disaster recovery provision is increasing. Factors which influence this include the need to back up and recover an increasing amount of data and to maintain critical services. This implies ongoing server and software upgrading/
replacement and increased staff support if handled internally. A further factor is the changing nature of Colleges including increased employer engagement and involvement in federations which include academies and university technical Colleges. This increased business implies greater demands on disaster recovery services.
Moving disaster recovery services to the cloud has the potential for increasing capacity as required and sharing management charges with other users. It can also increase the security of data by removing dependence on key internal staff.
The Projects
Two projects were focused wholly on disaster recovery:
South Tyneside College
South Tyneside’s key challenge was that one third of their turnover was derived from learners in the Marine Industry located in 73 countries. This added to the disaster recovery requirements in requiring 24/7 support. The campus front-end server is replicated in the cloud. As the project is focused on disaster recovery there hasn’t been any impact yet, other than the theoretical impact that if the College were to have a disaster it would minimize its downtime. South Tyneside use Microsoft Azure for their disaster recovery service.
Walsall College
Walsall College’s key challenge was to provide robust disaster recovery in a context where their two main buildings were close together and where their responsibilities include 2 academies and a university technical College.
Walsall College has integrated public and personal cloud
solutions to significantly increase the resilience of their disaster recovery plan. The College is developing a seamless
integration between our on-site private cloud and public cloud solutions to reduce
server infrastructure replacement costs while maintaining
excellent service uptime. By ensuring data integrity and availability in the event of a disaster and by making older
A further two projects included a significant disaster recovery activity.
Joseph Chamberlain College: This involves the back-up to the cloud, using Redstor, of all of the College’s data systems. (The other part of the project is concerned with the migration of email accounts to the cloud using Microsoft 365.)
South Devon College: This initially involves the back-up of some key servers to the cloud and then, if need be, these could be used as an option for disaster recovery. This consisted of installing Assigra software onto one of the College’s virtual servers which was responsible for creating back-ups, deduplication and uploading to the cloud data centre overnight. The second phase involved testing the disaster recovery of these servers by instructing the data centre to power on backed-up servers one by one and for the College to test each one thoroughly to prove they could be used in case of a disaster. (The second part of the project was to set up a remote farm of servers to allow
Similarities
All Colleges were faced with growing and more exacting demands for disaster recovery. South Tyneside College and Walsall College identified challenges and risks with their on-site provision.
The facility to release staff and equipment for other applications was a common element. Colleges anticipate significant savings in the region of £20,000 - £70,000. Project and change management was executed smoothly and limited to IT staff.
Item South Tyneside Walsall Joseph Chamberlain South Devon
Cloud Host Microsoft Azure Amazon Glacier Redstor
Security Emphasis on
encryption Public / Private
Cloud Replication of front end server in the cloud
Integration of on-site and public cloud services
Selected
systems backed up
Supplier
experiences Agreement with Microsoft took a long time as it was a first in the field
Rigorous
selection process from many suppliers
Straight forward Worked with Deverills as a partner
Outcomes
It should be noted that there is a difference between full disaster recovery and data back-up.
Differences
Delivery Models
South Tyneside College: This has involved using Microsoft Azure hosting and development services. Virtual machines to host and replicate all College data sets and applications servers have been created.
Walsall College: Walsall College has integrated public and personal cloud solutions to significantly increase the resilience of its disaster recovery plan. The College has developed a seamless integration between its on-site private cloud and public cloud solutions to reduce server infrastructure replacement costs while maintaining excellent service uptime. The cloud provider is Amazon Glacier.
The College required all data to be encrypted by Walsall College before it was transferred across to the cloud provider. The data is encrypted with a 448-bit data key before transfer and remains encrypted at the data centre until recovery is requested. The data centre is compliant with ISO 27001 and BS 25999. This maintains the College’s ownership of the data as it can only be read with knowledge of these encryption keys. Several software solutions were tested before settling on one that fulfilled these criteria.
Joseph Chamberlain College: This has involved the online back-up of College servers to Redstor servers using the Janet link. To achieve this, Redstor agents were installed on the College servers. For the larger servers, the initial back-ups were made to hard drives which were transported to Redstor with subsequent back-ups being online. Daily differential and weekly back-ups of all College servers are taking place.
South Devon College: This has involved the College working with partner, Deverills, to achieve back- up in the cloud of College servers.
Supplier Relationships
South Tyneside College: Microsoft Azure.
“Signing up with a cloud provider was significantly harder than anticipated. Whilst it appears relatively straight forward to sign up at commercial rates (i.e. only requirement being a credit card) obtaining an educational discount proved to be a challenge. Neither the resellers we were working with, nor Microsoft themselves, had a clear idea of what was required. Microsoft told us the issues we had were because we were one of the first people to sign up. This is fair enough as one of the purposes of pilots is to find and resolve issues and they do now seem to have now corrected these issues.“
The Microsoft contacts we were working with indicated that as far as they were aware we were the first educational establishment to sign up for an Azure educational contract in the UK. As a result all parties were feeling their way through the process; this resulted in delays resulting from the need to obtain clarification from Microsoft head office in the US on certain points, incorrect paperwork having been submitted etc. As a result, an activity that was expected to be quite simple turned out to be protracted and painful.
Microsoft have resolved the paperwork issues encountered. We have signed up for additional cloud contracts with them since and process was very straightforward. I know of other Colleges who’ve done the same without issue.”
Walsall College:
“We tried a variety of different cloud providers and software solutions to archive Walsall College’s data in the cloud. We settled on Amazon Glacier and have recently completed a
complete upload of all important data to the cloud. Evaluation included price/GB and took into account bandwith costs. We have evaluated several cloud solutions including Crash Plan,
EduServ, Amazon and Microsoft Azure. Crash Plan and Amazon Glacier were both found to be cost effective. During the course of this project pricing was continually changing and it was difficult to assess a long/medium term cost to storing our data in the cloud. Evaluating costs of different cloud providers can be difficult due to different cost structures (e.g. CPU, Memory, storage, bandwidth and I/O can all be charged in different ways).”
An important factor in the supplier decision is the location of the data centre, which should be kept in the EU for legal/access reasons. Walsall’s data on Amazon Glacier are held in Ireland.
Joseph Chamberlain College: Working with Redstor has proceeded smoothly.
Project and Change Management
South Tyneside College: All technical aspects of the project have proceeded well; the major lesson learnt was that the time it took to sign up for a ‘new’ service was significantly longer than
expected. Hopefully, given that these issues were the result of the resellers and Microsoft not having procedures in place and having to develop them as we went along, people following us should not encounter these issues!
Walsall College: Change management was limited in this project as the College had no current long term archive solution.
Joseph Chamberlain College: IT project management for cloud back-up has proceeded smoothly.
South Devon College: Most of the changes have been related to internal IT processes and have therefore had limited impact and have only affected IT staff.
SLAs
South Tyneside College: The main SLA is between the College and Microsoft Azure.
Walsall College: The main SLA is between the College and Amazon Glacier.
Joseph Chamberlain College: The main SLA is between the College and Redstor.
South Devon College: The main SLA is between the College and cloud hosting provider.
Impact
South Tyneside College: The process and procedures developed during this project have improved the accessibility of disaster recovery provision and should reduce the workload on the team responsible for these systems. This will allow the time that the network service team currently spends monitoring and maintaining these systems to be spent on strategic objectives, such as migration to Office 365. The full impact of this should become evident over the next 9-12 months.
At present, student experience is difficult to quantify and is likely to remain so. The systems and procedures developed during this project will come into play in the event of a major disaster or IT failure at the main campus. Should this occur these facilities should ensure that the student
experience has the least disruption possible. In addition, the time spent by IT staff maintaining the equipment in the onsite DR room can now be spent supporting students or implementing other projects.
making older data available for future retrieval all users of Walsall Colleges IT infrastructure could benefit.
“This project has given us the option to release expensive and required on-site storage to be better utilised for other more business-critical solutions. The changes are transparent to the student but have allowed us to go back further with our archiving and data recovery should the student lose data. We have significantly improved the IT services department’s understanding of public cloud solutions and have enhanced the College’s business continuity plan with the use of cloud solutions.”
Joseph Chamberlain College:
“Online back-up is working very well. It removes the ‘techie’ aspect that is often associated with managing an in house backup solution that can consist of a number of technical components.”
South Devon College: Servers are backed up to the cloud – no local back-up is required and no tape back-up for disaster recovery. The cost of data to the cloud proved to be more expensive than expected.
Joseph Chamberlain College:
“Online back-up is working very well. It removes the ‘techie’ aspect that is often associated with managing an in house backup solution that can consist of a number of technical components.”
South Devon College: Servers are backed up to the cloud – no local back-up is required and no tape back-up for disaster recovery. The cost of data to the cloud proved to be more expensive than expected.ck-up for disaster recovery. The cost of data to the cloud proved to be more expensive than expect.
Savings
South Tyneside College:
“Currently an onsite DR room has been established on the opposite side of the campus from the server room. The current DR equipment will reach the end of its planned life in summer 2013; replacements would cost approximately £70,000. The DR room could also be reused for other purposes.”
Walsall College: Future costs savings have been estimated at around £20,000. On the last occasion we refreshed our on-site backup solution we spent approximately £24,000 on hardware plus £6500 on software. With the requirement to increase the amount of time we store back-up data we
expected this cost to increase at the next refresh. Our testing and implementation shows Walsall College could save approximately £20,000 on our next back-up refresh by keeping the on-site storage to a minimum and by extending our existing refresh cycle by at least one academic year. This project has given us the option to release expensive and required on-site storage to be better utilised for other more business-critical solutions. The changes are transparent to the student but have allowed us to go back further with our archiving and data recovery should the student lose data.
South Devon College: Data costs can accurately be calculated by the hosting company in late Autumn 2013.
Sustainability and Expected Longer Term Impact
South Tyneside College: Perceived concerns over use of the cloud within the College have been reduced; this has helped pave the way for the adoption of other cloud services.
Walsall College: The project has shown that the use of the cloud for hosting services which will be primarily accessed via the LAN is feasible and practical. Concerns in relation to latency and
bandwidth which were raised by some staff have proven to be unfounded.
Joseph Chamberlain College and South Devon College: Smooth operation of these two projects indicates future sustainability now that cloud-based back-up solutions have been implemented.
Replicablity for the Wider FE Sector
South Tyneside College: The development process used is replicable for any College wishing to migrate data and applications servers to Microsoft Azure. South Tyneside College also produced a guide to dissaster recovery for the AoC entitled ‘Utilising the Cloud for Disaster Recovery’
www.aoc.co.uk/cloud_computing/case_studies
Walsall College: The approach is replicable for College federations wishing to use Amazon Glacier. The encryption approach should be considered by all Colleges who are backing up sensitive information in the cloud.
Joseph Chamberlain College: The approach is replicable for single Colleges wishing to implement a Redstor solution.
4.4 Employment -/Business-Focused Applications in the Cloud
Needs and Opportunities
Effective employer engagement by Colleges demands appropriate IT support systems. Employer engagement covers a wide range of activity including traineeships, apprenticeships, learning companies, enterprise academies and full cost delivery of tailor-made training and consultancy. Work-based learning requires seamless communication, assessment, recording and reporting across the workplace and College elements of programmes. There is a need for collaborative management and learning between all parties involved. There are challenges in providing flexible access to information and learning for learners in the workplace. Cloud computing has the
potential to enable these challenges to be overcome. At the same time, cloud computing can support work-based learners wherever they are – on the move, at home, at work or in College. Another form of employer engagement is to enable small business to access College software tools and expertise at low cost.
A further aspect is the use of cloud-based CRM to record and report employer engagement.
The Projects
Bolton College: This project involves the use of Chromebooks and a range of Google applications by work-based assessors, in a variety of ways, to support their learners. This includes direct access to proprietary cloud-based e-portfolios, access to College VLE (Moodle) and tracking progress and assessment and attainment via Google Docs templates. This project will be evaluated finally in November 2013.
Work-based assessors from business and IT, construction, hair, beauty, care and teacher education have been provided with 3G-enabled Google Chromebook computers which use Google’s
cloud-based operating system. The assessors are using the Chromebooks to access email,
e-portfolios, Moodle VLE and Google Apps for education documents hosted in the cloud while attending and between work placement visits. The Training Services department are also using Google Docs to track and monitor work-placed visits.
Barking and Dagenham College: This project has focussed on the use of Google Apps and docs in embedded learning primarily in eILPs. This approach is being used in learning across the College and specifically includes use of Google Apps by the College’s enterprise learners, being those who wish to set up their own businesses.
Telford College of Arts and Technology: This project was developed due to the College’s
observation of local businesses not being aware of what open source software could offer them for far less money. It involves a website which allows the use of open source software by local
businesses backed up by technical staff who offer expertise in the configuration and use of this software.
Gloucestershire College: Details of this project are given in the Student and other Stakeholders Relationship Management in the Cloud section of this report. It includes plans to embed Employer Engagement CRM activity in the new integrated website/CRM system.
Outcomes Similarities
There is less similarity between the experiences of these projects as they are addressing different aspects of employer engagement.
There is a common aim in using the cloud to provide good quality services to employers. Bolton College used it in the management of work-based learning, Barking and Dagenham College through Enterprise Projects and Telford College through business software and other IT support services.
Both Colleges report significant impact on the provision of more flexible services to learners, staff and employers.
Both Bolton College and Barking and Dagenham College report significant savings in both equipment and staff time.
Both Bolton College and Barking and Dagenham College are using Google Apps and Google Docs via Chromebooks and netbooks to make applications available outside and within their Colleges.
Both have had fairly straightforward project management experiences and have been quick to achieve a wide and impressive range of user benefits.
Both experienced some telecommunications challenges which impacted to a degree on continuity of service.
Differences
Item Bolton Barking and Dagenham
Developement team In-house team Google Partner + in-house, including apprentices
Connectivity 3G problems at remote locations Discontinuity in JANET services Functionality Some problems with Google
functionality to handle certain types of document , such as merged cells.
N/A
The Telford College project is significantly different as it uses a private cloud to support the use of Open Source Software in small businesses.
Delivery Models
Barking and
Dagenham College:
Google supplied and hosted apps in the cloud. Development and consultancy supplied by Damson Consulting, a Google Education Partner. Telford College of Arts and Technology:
Cloud-hosted website.
Supplier Relationships
Bolton College: Some problems were encountered with 3G access at certain work-based locations. 3G connectivity via tablet devices is not yet on a par with mobile phone reception and some areas still have limited/poor reception. Google’s inability to convert documents which include merged cells impacted on the project. The Google Drive offline trial has identified potential issues
regarding digital signature validation.
Barking and Dagenham College: There were good working relationships with Damson Consulting. Connection via JANET to the internet was lost for around 14 hours and this made access to Google Apps not possible via the College internal network.
Telford College of Arts and Technology:
“We have liaised with respected FE consultants, Judges Consulting and AGM trading, to help advise on the suitability of e-learning software that could be pre-packaged and made available for our app store for the wider education community”.
Project and Change Management
Bolton College: The project has over-run original timelines due to a number of unforeseen issues, namely an internal audit which delayed the start of the project and the time it takes to ‘Googlefy’ existing Microsoft Word documents. This area was only identified after much frustration at Google’s inability to convert documents which include merged cells (something which almost all tracking and review documents contained).
In addition there were problems with 3G connectivity for the Chromebooks and the knock-on effect this had on digital signatures, as an off-line version of Google Docs which was looked into. This did not provide evidence of different users accessing the system and “signing” the
documentation. Achievements include:
Chromebooks being provided to 20 work-based assessors
6 iPad minis distributed to work-based assessors as part of a Chromebook comparison trial Conversion of existing learner review documentation for 40 qualifications into Google Doc format
Barking and Dagenham College: 2 e-Learning Apprentices worked in classes and in the staffroom to support the roll-out of Google Apps, including the use of 16 Chromebooks and 60 netbooks. An augmented framework for BDC-customised administrative management for the effective delivery of the Google Apps (OBI 1 project) is now tested and working as planned and includes:
automatically onboarding and off boarding of staff and student accounts which includes welcome and data migration emails
integration with Google Cloud storage for easy search ability of alumni students’ past work Moodle integration
the visual management tool called Flash Panel, a free service for managing Google Apps researching the roll-out to mobile devices for BYOD
The area for developing teaching, learning and assessment (Transforming Learning) is now using Google Apps (Google Sites) to promote, deliver and record good practice etc. The Enterprise Zone is now using Google Apps to promote, share and manage projects.
Telford College of Arts and Technology: Technical development proceeded smoothly. The main challenge has been business community engagement. The following activities were achieved: A website has been created to promote and offer the services
Multiple software titles have been pre-packaged and made available to the app store
working partnerships have been created to assist with any training requirements Liaised with Shropshire Chamber of Commerce and Enterprise to promote the services Worked with respected FE consultants to aid delivery of VLEs.
Impact
Bolton College: The Training Services department now see the real tangible benefits Google Apps can provide to their work. After an initial sceptical reaction the team have fully bought in to the cultural changes which are required in order to implement this much-improved system of tracking. In fact they believe the use of Google Docs will be so beneficial that they have already started talking to franchise partners about them adopting it too.
One curriculum area has already adopted a cloud-based e-portfolio following the trial during the project.
Business and IT assessors are using the Chromebooks and 3G to access existing e-portfolio systems in the work place and utilise this with their learners.
Construction and Hairdressing assessors were using an electronic and paper-based version of existing documentation in tandem to assess the benefits and advantages of using the cloud-based system with both Chromebooks and iPad minis. Hairdressing assessors have now adopted the use of an e-portfolio which was initially expected to work with the iPad alone; however, this is now being used in tandem with the Chromebook due to the limitations of the iPad app for the
e-portfolio.
Teacher Education assessors are using dual systems along with access to Moodle VLE.
Care assessors who are less computer literate are currently using the Chromebooks and, having started to use the Google Docs, are expected to fully adopt its use from September 2013.
Barking and Dagenham College: The Enterprise Zone is now using Google Apps to manage their projects including Google+. 10 Enterprise (real world) projects were successfully delivered.
Telford College of Arts and Technology: The project has delivered its intended outputs by being able to offer open-source, pre-packaged applications via a website and the project outputs
correspond with these detailed within the project. The College continues to promote and make software packages available via our app store during and after 2013. The College has successfully tendered and won three IT support contracts for:
A private school
A local community centre A local parish council
Savings
Bolton College: Savings will provided at a later date. Anticipated:
“Staff time – streamlined, smarter working practices will reduce the amount of staff time required per candidate. Reduced visits – saving on travel time, travel expenses and reduced carbon footprint. Green process – paper-light documentation will reduce paper costs, printing and the need for physical storage requirements.”
Barking and Dagenham College: This applies to the whole College use of Google.
“To match what we have with Google we need to purchase the following at an estimated cost of: Video streaming and management (£5000)
Image bank (£1000)
Video conferencing (£2000) Document storage (£10,000) Websites (e-portfolios) (£5000)
Mail with calendars with SMS notifications (£5000) Project management tools (£1000)
Admin control and portal (£500) Blogging (£500)
Telford College of Arts and Technology:
“The private school we currently provide IT support to do not currently have a VLE and do not have the funds to purchase a server to host the service. We are currently negotiating a hosted service which negates the need for costly server(s) and can offer support for the software, whilst offering very competitive rates for training.”
Sustainability and Expected Longer Term Impact
Bolton College: The Training Services department now see the real tangible benefits Google Apps can provide to their work. After an initial sceptical reaction the team are fully bought in to the cultural changes which are required in order to implement this much-improved system of tracking. In fact they believe the use of Google Docs will be so beneficial that they have already started talking to franchise partners about them adopting it too.
One curriculum area has already adopted a cloud-based e-portfolio following the trial during the project.
Replicablity for the Wider FE Sector
Bolton College: The Google templates which were created will be made available and the process which we went through to move to a cloud-based solution were shared during a presentation at the JISC NW RSC conference.
Barking and Dagenham College: The College will develop a Google+ community and promote and share its sites for enterprise templates to the community. It has presented its whole College use of Google Apps to a range of conferences.
4.5 Learner-Focused Applications in the Cloud
Needs and Opportunities
There is an ongoing and increasing need to make software and communication/collaboration tools available across College sites to mobile learners and to learners at home. As part of this there is a need to make software widely available to those with physical disabilities and learning
difficulties. There is also a need for good quality multi-media learning materials to progress learner engagement.
Cloud computing has the potential to enable access to learning applications anytime, anywhere and on a range of user devices.
The Projects
Barking and Dagenham College: This project has focussed on the use of Google Apps and docs in embedded learning primarily in eILPs. This approach is being used in learning across the College.
Barnsley College: This project has provided a robust, innovative system to enable collaborative learning to take place within and external to the College and targeted information to be provided groups, students and Staff. It is based on cloud hosting of learning applications through Hub Metro and Hub Mobile, a tailored set of web applications.
Blackburn College: This provides Virtual Desktop Services to all College learners and specific services to those with learning difficulties or disabilities. This project uses Microsoft as a software service provider.
Grimsby Institute GIFHE Zone: As part of the College’s ILT and IT strategies it has identified the need to support the bringing of learners’ own technologies into the College network environment. This has generally been through the provision of internet access on learners’ devices. Taking this a step further, the College is now going to provide access to full College resources on learners’ devices or home PC via a ‘ cloud ‘ desktop infrastructure. This would allow the same experience on these devices as College-owned devices, and would supplement considerably the VLE which gives access to learning materials to radically enrich the learner access and control. It would give access to the full ‘College’ experience from home or mobile devices.
Leeds City College: This large project is focused on provision of ‘Classroom in the cloud’ through the use of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure which enables access to applications by learners on mobile as well as College devices. It utilises a private cloud and is currently being trialled on one site of the College. The strategy partner is IBM Global Services working with Vissensa. The IBM server runs Hypervisor and Linux. It includes access to Collabco’s MyDay product and a
Windows 8 App. This effectively means that ‘the tablet is the College’. The integration of a wide range of College services is accessed through a single sign-on facility.
North East Worcestershire College: By utilising cloud-based applications North East
Worcestershire College have enabled collaborative technologies and mobile working options to help support the work of all staff and students. The funding from the AoC has allowed the College to dedicate time and resources to supporting staff and students to use these technologies and explore avenues for reducing costs by working with partners to develop our cloud-based systems. Single sign-on has allowed staff and students access to over 40 resources, not just the cloud-based storage and email. This has reduced the amount of training required to access resources and removed some of the pressure off LRC staff in helping users locate usernames and passwords for the various tools.
Oxford and Cherwell College: This project involves the use of a video platform to pilot flipped learning in Hair & Beauty and Hospitality at the College.
South Devon College: This project, which was part of a wider project, was to set up a remote farm of servers to allow students, teaching staff and remote workers to access all College systems. The College worked closely with Deverills, an IT consultant, to implement a farm.
Warrington Collegiate Institute: This project involves the use of VMware to enable all College learning applications to be available across the College and at remote sites.
Outcomes Similarities
The common characteristic of these projects is the use of the cloud to provide increased access to learning applications across College sites, at remote sites and at home. A variety of approaches have been used to achieve this and a range of benefits have been derived. The majority of these projects are longer term in that they are evolving to add further learning applications, support different groups of learners and on an increasing range of devices. All projects have achieved some early impact with strong potential for more.
