Data Centre Strategy - Association of Colleges · Data Centre Strategy Summary Implementation Plan Version 1.6 March 2010 page 4 Data Centre Services Strategy Plan This document is

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

Data Centre Strategy Summary Implementation Plan Version 1.6

March 2010 page 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 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 ......................................................................................................................................................... 10

Delivery Model ............................................................................................................... 11

Governance Model .............................................................................................................................................................. 12 Outcomes & transformations .................................................................................................................................... 12 Scope ................................................................................................................................................................................... 12

Next Steps ...................................................................................................................... 14

Service Menu .................................................................................................................................................................... 14 Sustainability ........................................................................................................................................................................ 15

Funding Requirements ................................................................................................................................................ 16 Staff Resources ..................................................................................................................................................................... 16 Non-Staff Resources ........................................................................................................................................................... 17 Service Costs .......................................................................................................................................................................... 17

Implementation Plan .................................................................................................................................................... 17 Proposed Project Phasing ............................................................................................................................................... 17 Sample Target Measurement ........................................................................................................................................ 18 Staffing Plan .......................................................................................................................................................................... 18 Initial steps – scoping exercise ..................................................................................................................................... 18


March 2010 page 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 7th

December 2009. 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.

(http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.22351)


March 2010 page 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

email, 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 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 £100M over 15 years for Russell Group alone (assuming only half

the equivalent benefit is applicable across the sector)

£220 M

Salford, Derby,

Leicester

£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)

£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 10-12 “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 2020”.


March 2010 page 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 ICT-

related 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 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 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 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 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 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 13

Benefit Detail 10 Year saving

Release of Staff

Time

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).

£100 M

Release of

Management

Time

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.

£20 M

Professional

Expertise

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

Income generation

rather than direct

savings

Release of Real

Estate

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

Income generation

rather than direct

savings

Reduction of

Power Costs

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.

£450 M

Risk Reduction 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.

Service quality

improvement

Operational

Savings

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.

£220 M

Virtualisation

Consolidation

Taking the YHMAN report and extrapolating across the sector,

however assuming 50% overlap with operational savings and

power cost reduction

£100 M

Virtualisation

Benefits

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.

New high

performance

opportunity

Total savings to the sector £890 M


March 2010 page 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. email 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 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 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 17

Non-Staff Resources

Staff will requires standard facilities, computing, travel and other operating overheads, this has been

estimated at equal to staff costs.

Provision and operating = £1,350,000

Service Costs

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 2010/2011 £818,750 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 self-

sustaining.

Proposed Project Phasing


March 2010 page 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:

Academic Year 1 Take up 196 racks

Academic Year 2 Take up 784 racks

Academic Year 3 Take up 1,372 racks

Staffing Plan

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.

Documents

Data Centre Strategy - Association of Colleges · Data Centre Strategy Summary Implementation Plan Version 1.6 March 2010 page 4 Data Centre Services Strategy Plan This document is