UW's Collaboration Objectives & Obstacles CLOUDS AND FOG UW's Collaboration Objectives & Obstacles Kelli Trosvig Scott Mah Terry Gray 21 May 2010

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY We're right there with you in the cloud Key goal: easier collab. in a multi-platform/vendor world Key success barriers: interop issues, complexity, features Key “Asks”: - Strengthen SAML federation commitment/investment - Simplify (Exchange platform coexistence, licensing, etc) - Interoperate with other players (esp. calendaring) We love the converged BPOS+Live single-tenant goal We've done some good work together; much still to do

MEETING OBJECTIVES Strengthen our partnership Share our cloud computing vision, objectives, & obstacles Better understand MS cloud computing directions Make progress on mutual objectives

PRELIMINARIES UW and MS have a strong partnership and we want to keep it that way! We need MS to be hugely successful All comments are intended to be constructive! We know Higher Education does not drive your business but UW is well-positioned to help you be successful in heterogeneous environments and to understand the next generation of workers.

ABOUT UW $3.7 Billion/year enterprise: 3 campuses; 2 hospitals; 450K managed IDs Centers in China (Beijing), Spain (Leon), Italy (Rome) 50,000 regular students + 45,000 “P&CE” students/year 30,000 faculty & staff, including 6 Nobel Laureates, 15 MacArthur Fellows 270 distinct research centers #1 in federal research $$ to public universities --every year since 1974 A leader in number of student awards, scholarships, fellowships 136 Fulbright, 35 Rhodes, 7 Marshall, 4 Gates Cambridge, etc 9th in US for students studying abroad Research on all continents, including Antarctica... and in oceans, space

UW FUNDING Grants and contracts: 31% Patient revenue: 27% Tuition: 15% The sources of UW funding (FY2009) break down as follows: Grants and contracts:   31% Patient revenue:           27% Tuition:                       15% State funding for ops:   10% Other:                         17%

CONTEXT: Research Universities Mission: discovery & innovation Means: extreme collaboration Globally, at scale Culture: decentralized; diffuse authority Collections of many independent businesses A microcosm of “the Internet” http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/wiki1/images/4/4c/Collaboration.gif “Industry turns ideas into money; Universities turn money into ideas.” --Craig Hogan

CLOUD COMPUTING: UW is also “all in” 73K UW users 50% of students ALREADY forward their UW email!

WHY THE CLOUD for UW? It's where our students have gone, fac/staff are going Enables easier collaboration Leverages market agility, advances Allows better use of scarce IT resources; lower cost → IT Goal: any time / place / device access & collaboration → Cloud computing supports this goal

STRATEGIC PREMISES Cloud computing is a big deal UW should encourage it, modulo compliance obligations Compliance risk is reduced via partner contracts A single-vendor strategy will not work for UW Integrating faculty/staff with students is essential

COLLABORATION VISION the illusion of simplicity and coherence! Seamless & simple collaboration across multiple platforms & orgs Cal/Scheduling “just works” Doc sharing invitations “just work” User & resource discovery is easy no matter where data is hosted. Robust federation replaces “Multiple Account Madness” Work products “for the ages”

COLLABORATION EXAMPLES Physics prof conducting exams at multiple universities iSchool teaching for-credit classes at other universities Students living abroad; faculty on sabbatical Global health researchers in Africa + gov't health agencies Dentistry prof's longitudinal study w/practitioners in state Industry expert teaches class; needs collab space that students and other industry experts can easily use Shared workspaces for consortia and VOs (e.g. CSG)

PRINCIPLES Maximize user choice via standards-based services Integrate via interoperability Disintermediate and automate Leverage high-scale / low-cost providers Embrace and adapt consumer technology Enable; don't block or mandate Pervasive is better than Perfect (e.g. IMAP vs. DeltaSync; CalDav vs. ActiveSync)

PREVIOUS CHALLENGES Live@edu stability (and kudos for improved status notifications!) Moving targets: multiple provisioning code rewrites (FYI: Our developers really like RESTful web services APIs) Understanding platform tradeoffs (Live, BPOS-S, D) e.g. BPOS-S value-add over Live@edu (for basic email/cal) Domain name constraints (an issue since 2008) e.g. inability to use same domain name for >1 tenant

CURRENT CHALLENGES / PRIORITIES Defining Goal State Architecture and Gaps/Barriers Migration planning & timing Managing our customers' expectations (hopes v. reality) Faculty/staff cloud service roll-out; Groups integration On-prem Exchange upgrade decisions Barriers to adoption Interoperability issues (esp. cal/scheduling, doc sharing) Federation & identity issues; SSO “illusions” Application features (e.g. O/E annoyances, co-editing) Licensing complexity (esp AD & SP CALs)

OLD THE PLAYING FIELD UW Exchange Servers Microsoft BPOS Microsoft Live@edu Other cloud services UW SharePoint Servers Other universities Google Apps UW IMAP & Web Servers The IT challenge: make collaboration work in this context!

THE PLAYING FIELD NEW UW Exchange Servers Microsoft Live@edu + BPOS Other cloud services UW SharePoint Servers Other universities Google Apps UW IMAP & Web Servers The IT challenge: make collaboration work in this context!

INTEROPERABILITY MATTERS for both collaboration & market share Claim: The market opportunity outside traditional corporate IT shops is growing, but requires platform agility & interop. http://blog.law.cornell.edu/tbruce/files/2008/03/8b731795-a600-44f7-a744-9b7a501ede5b.jpg http://gilbane.com/globalization/content%20matters.png

FEDERATION & IDENTITY ISSUES WS-Fed vs. SAML; BPOS vs. Live@edu federation Identity = multiple equivalent email addresses Use of identities and ID providers in different contexts IdP scope, diversity: UW, MS, Google, Facebook (cf. Zoho) Control of LiveID eligibility and use; consumer vs. institutional Primary user vs. collaborator Federated access for different kinds of apps, scenarios: Web-based apps; thick clients (MS & non-MS); OS login Thick-client breakage...

THICK CLIENT PROBLEM Many federation protocols designed only for web apps For web apps, service provider need not store passwords For existing non-web apps (rich/thick clients): Some (unknown) number break with WS-Fed; more with SAML Proxy for IMAP/POP/SMTP clients definitely helps SAML & WS-Fed parity would also help... But that still leaves XMPP, CalDAV, etc We don't have a good way of sizing the problem Would retaining passwords after federation avoid this problem? Would per-user federation be a near-term possibility?

MIGRATION GOALS Get to converged BPOS+Live single-tenant model ASAP Retire on-premise Exchange/SharePoint ASAP Make basic (free) services available to all faculty/staff (Pre-provision accounts to reduce collaboration friction) Support full-svc, basic-svc, cal-only, & collab-only users Allow SAML SSO (without breaking thick clients) Full calendar interop w/on-prem Exchange during migration Allow some departments to migrate this summer Minimize migrations (and disappointments) for faculty/staff

MIGRATION CHOICES for Faculty & Staff this summer Move to BPOS 14 Beta + Earlier access to SharePoint and OCS + Perception of better stability and support - Delayed access to SAML Federation - Does not avoid later migration - Requires inventing solution to uw.edu domain conflict Move to existing Live@edu + MS recommendation + Early access to SAML federation (but with some app breakage) + Cleanest migration to converged environment + Access to SkyDrive ( - but not SP, OCS )

FEDERATION CHOICES Options: None, WS-Fed, SAML, Hybrid Our strong preference is SAML, but... We need commitment that SAML will be a “first class citizen” going forward, e.g. Live SDK & thick clients updated to work with SAML, ala WS* When SharePoint is added to Live@edu, SAML will work Windows credential manager enhanced to work with SAML

IN OUR PERFECT WORLD: Microsoft... Moves quickly to single-tenant converged BPOS+Live offering Helps us quickly resolve platform conflicts & best migration approach Ensures parity between SAML federation & WS-Fed (now & future) (and also allows selective per-user federation) Works toward full calendar interoperability with Gcal Provides killer online co-editing tools Addresses a few key Outlook/Exchange issues Develops a simpler enterprise licensing model, esp. for CALs Embraces the idea that reducing collaboration friction increases market opportunity –and eases migration pain

FUTURE PARTNERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES SAML federation: Extended Tech Preview work Ideas for easier multiple Exchange platform coexistence (autodiscover+ availability service) Cross-vendor calendaring/scheduling Reducing provisioning barriers to customers Improving federation authorization capabilities Extending federated access to more svcs, e.g. CodePlex Improved collab tools for researchers (Technical Computing) Using Azure in research / teaching

UW in the clouds and fog... DISCUSSION

UW Academic and Research Excellence Academic Return on Investment Award more bachelors degrees per student FTE than any other state 1st in US for alumni remaining in state where degree granted 3rd in US for graduate degrees granted Amongst the lowest in the nation for cost per degree as compared to peers 5th in the US for after-degree-salary levels as compared to the cost of degree (Smart Money 12/08) International Rankings 16th in the world for academic and research excellence (Shanghai Jiao Tong) 4th in the world overall and 1st for public universities for scientific research citations (Science Watch) 6 Nobel Prize winners, 15 MacArthur Genius Awards US Rankings 1st in public university research funding; #2, overall 2nd in federal funding for (international) area studies and foreign language programs 4th in number of faculty members (86) who are members of nationally recognized academies 1st in Primary Care in Medicine and Nursing Professional Programs Numerous academic programs in the top 20

TOP 5 BARRIERS TO O/E ADOPTION e. g TOP 5 BARRIERS TO O/E ADOPTION e.g. why some people don't use Outlook/Exchange Exchange throws away valid email (e.g. user+foo@bar.com) Outlook drops important header info on forwards “outside” Outlook can cause meetings to be missed (decline = delete) Outlook/Exchange sometimes breaks long URLs FIXED! Outlook does not allow user rules to redirect (vs. forward) Note that some of these adversely affect recipients not using O/E, thus causing them to be unhappy with others' choice of O/E.