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

2. 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

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

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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%

7. 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”
“Industry turns ideas into money;
Universities turn money into ideas.” --Craig Hogan

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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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”

12. 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)

13. 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)

14. PREVIOUS CHALLENGES
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 (for basic /cal)
Domain name constraints (an issue since 2008)
e.g. inability to use same domain name for >1 tenant

15. 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)

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

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

18. INTEROPERABILITY MATTERS for both collaboration & market share
Claim: The market opportunity outside traditional corporate
IT shops is growing, but requires platform agility & interop.

19. FEDERATION & IDENTITY ISSUES
WS-Fed vs. SAML; BPOS vs. federation
Identity = multiple equivalent 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...

20. 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?

21. 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

22. 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
+ MS recommendation
+ Early access to SAML federation (but with some app breakage)
+ Cleanest migration to converged environment
+ Access to SkyDrive ( - but not SP, OCS )

23. 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 SAML will work
Windows credential manager enhanced to work with SAML

24. 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

25. 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

26. UW in the clouds and fog...
DISCUSSION

27. 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

28. 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 (e.g.
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.