Dare to Change One Campus Gmail Jonathan Schaeffer Vice Provost (IT)

Philosophy Core mandate of the UofA is research and teaching IT is an enabler Some of IT is utility computing We should get out of the utility computing business Eliminate duplication Centralize where appropriate

Current Situation Decentralized fragmented community – One large IT department (AICT) – One small IT group but with a large budget (AIS) – Over 30 mini IT groups on campus Duplication of services Very costly

Dare to Change? Dare to Discover goal of creating the transformative organization Address student engagement – We run the risk of being irrelevant Change the way we think about IT

Over 30 independent systems on campus Each has their own hardware, software, and people resources No easy way to reach all people on campus Security concerns Does this make sense?

(1) Centralize Have a single system on campus – Simplify IT infrastructure on campus – Cost savings by removing duplication – Enable university-wide calendaring – Consolidate Blackberry servers – Address user concerns – Address auditor’s concerns – Improve security – Simplify emergency response – Green computing

How Costly is (1) Case 1 (low) , no calendaring, no Blackberry Annual average cost: – Hardware $6,000 (three servers + disk) – Software $500 (mostly open source) Average power cost: $1,000 Average people cost: 25% “Total” cost = $25,000

How Costly is (2) Case 2 (High) , calendaring, Blackberry Annual average cost: – Hardware $13,800 (five servers + disk) – Software $3,300 (Microsoft, Blackberry) Average power cost: $1,700 Average people cost: 50% “Total” cost = $53,800

How Costly is (3) Back of the envelope calculation… Within the units – 30 x $25,000 = $750,000 – 30 x $53,800 = $1,618,000 – The truth lies somewhere in between Have the savings stay in the faculty, department or unit

People Centralization is NOT an excuse to eliminate jobs IT people are generally overworked Let’s get out of the mundane task of Free up precious people resources to further the research and teaching agenda

Impediments to Change 1)Resistance to change across campus on almost everything 2)100 mini-empires across campus o Many insist on ownership o Reluctant to do anything centrally Can we break this mindset?

2) Google Locally hosted solutions are too expensive – Zimbra – Microsoft Get out of the business – Give it to Google

Google’s Gmail Large default box (7.3 GB) integrated with calendaring Google apps (including docs and tools) Cost is $0 for Google’s service Create central Blackberry service Many are already using Gmail

Issues Security and privacy – PIA under way (November 1) – Gmail offers us at least what we currently have and in some cases improved security Educating users – Gmail ≠ Outlook – Some things won’t be exactly the same

Proposal Single system for the entire campus – Follow in the footsteps of CCids and UWS – Break the fiefdom mentality on campus – Open the door for creating IT economies of scale where appropriate Have this externally hosted: Google – Increase in functionality – Student engagement

Dare to Change? These are financially difficult times for the university Gmail offers many advantages and the few disadvantages can be addressed Let’s start the dialogue of change