SCI Next Steps
A Service Delivery Platform
School Technology Commission
January 27, 2010
Phillip Emer
e-Learning Commission
Infrastructure Committee
SCI Reality Check
 What NC has done with SCI is impressive
 NCLTI has provided validation and
feasibility analysis for next steps
 What did we say we would do?
Then….
Telephone!
Company!
Central Office!
Insufficient Internet connection
Delay!
Internet!
SCHOOL!
Insufficient school connection
LEA HUB!
Filtering and!
Aggregation!
Happens Here!
North Carolina Content!
• NCVPS!
• Learn & Earn Online!
• NCWISE!
• Online Testing!
• Other instructional services!
Towards Equity of Access
Telephone!
Company!
Central Office!
SCHOOL!
LEA HUB!
Filtering and!
Aggregation!
Happens Here!
Internet!
North Carolina Content!
• NCVPS!
• Learn & Earn Online!
• NCWISE!
• Online Testing!
• Other online instructional
services and content!
The Education Network
Telephone!
Company!
Central Office!
SCHOOL!
LEA HUB!
Filters, Servers,!
FireWalls Located!
Here!
Internet!
North Carolina Content!
• NCVPS!
• Learn & Earn Online!
• NCWISE!
• Online Testing!
• Other online instructional
services and content!
Implementation Roadmap
Connectivity!
A Platform!
Services!
Collaboration!
Organization!
Services!
Communities
and Backbone!
Funding!
FY08
FY09
FY10
The Platform
 The network is a service delivery platform
 Reliable high bandwidth connections allow
the flexibility to move services into the
network
 Specifically, move servers and some
network appliances into the network
 Bonus – services are e-rate eligible
 There’s an App for that - Cloud
NC Education Cloud
Objective
To transition from LEAhosted server
infrastructure to cloudhosted infrastructure as
a service.
Rationale
•  LEAs are generally unequipped to
host and manage production server
infrastructure.
•  There is significant overlap in the
applications and content hosted on
LEA servers
•  Emerging commercial cloud
offerings provide reliable, powerful,
infrastructure as a service
•  There are many existing and
emerging K-12 computing needs
that are periodic (e.g., only M-F or
only Aug-May or only 9 am – 4 pm)
NC Education Cloud - Goals
Goals
Potential 4-year target
Increase IT reliability
99.9% uptime; All critical
data backed up; All server
resources secured.
Increase IT efficiency
80% utilization of resources.
Decrease IT cost
Cut aggregate cost of server
infrastructure and support in
half.
Increase number of LEA staff
supporting users and instruction
Free up at least 1 nominal
FTE per LEA to support
instruction.
NC Education Cloud – Numbers
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/reserved-instances/#3
!
NC Education Cloud – Numbers [2]
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/!
What Administrators and Users See
Web Application
Dynamic
Content
Utility
Adaptive IT capacity
Fixed
Content
Cached
Content
Quality of
Service
Application
Acceleration
Hosted
Infrastructure
CDN
Nodes
Hosting
Reliable facilities and
infrastructure
Storage
Nodes
Cloud Storage
Infinitely scalable
storage capacity
Content Delivery
Content close to
end users
NC Education Cloud – The Work
Project Planning
IT Assessment
As with all IT initiatives
creation of the NC
Education Cloud will require
careful planning.
We must do an onsite
assessment of
infrastructure and
infrastructure support at all
LEAs. This work should be
done in parallel with the
overall planning work.
NC Education Cloud – The Work [2]
Deploy Cloud
Pilot Migrations
The NC Education Cloud
will incorporate one or more
public cloud provider
partners (e.g., Amazon,
IBM, AT&T) with NC-private
cloud elements (ITS).
MCNC, as the education
service provider, could
establish and maintain the
interfaces with the public
clouds and provide the
service layer that brings the
cloud to K12.
Initiate a group of pilot
server infrastructure
migrations to the cloud.
The pilots will be chosen
strategically to facilitate the
fine-tuning of migration,
operational, and support
processes.
NC Education Cloud – The Work [3]
Migration
Instrumentation
The process of migrating
LEA (and DPI) server
infrastructure into the NC
Education Cloud will be
scheduled over a 3-year
rollout period.
Instrument the cloud for
collection of usage and
operational data. The data
can be useful for optimizing
services and as input to
data systems.
The Great News – It’s Sustainable!
The NC Education Cloud is inherently sustainable as
once the transition is complete the recurring cost of
infrastructure will be based on usage, and will benefit
from aggregation and scale. Said another way, the total
cost of ownership for infrastructure will be cut in
aggregate across the state.
THANK YOU!