1. Race to the Top Technology Infrastructure and Services NC Education Cloud
Phil Emer

2. Organization & Collaboration
SBE
DPI
Leadership Team
advises
RttT Technology Infrastructure Advisory Committee
Program Director
LEA Working Groups
Project Management
Application workload testing
Collaborative Services Working Group
This shows that we need to do this work in partnership with LEAs and other stakeholders. We have done this before with SCI and in fact we have a number of existing working groups.
Site surveys and inventory
RFP - vendor specifications
Shared Services Working Group
Digital Media and Licensing
Working Group
E-rate and CIPA
Planning & Design
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3. The RttT Technology Project Team
DPI
Partner Organizations
Rebecca
Garland
Peter
Asmar
Adam
Levinson
The Friday Institute
MCNC
Program Director
Phil Emer
NCSU ITng Lab
Cloud Services
NEW
Instructional Tech
Neill Kimrey
NC ITS
NCVPS
Network & E-rate
Ed Chase
PM Office
Jerry Bunn
Data Systems
Mike Veckenstedt
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4. Partner Roles Partner Scope of Work The Friday Institute
Overall project management
Planning and design
Systems architecture and engineering
Total Cost of Ownership modeling
MCNC
LEA infrastructure and application surveys
LEA Cloud migration engineering
NCSU ITng Lab
Application workload testing
Measurement & monitoring tool dev.
NC Information Technology Services
Statewide licensing and procurement
Provider SLA and contracts management
NCVPS
LMS RFP support
Collaborative tool RFP support
Learning object research and specification
This shows the high level of what we know we need to do and who can do it it terms of partners.
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5. Budget Big Picture Expense Item 4-year Budget
DPI Cloud Services Manager [1 FTE]
$0.4M
Service provider contracts [including project management and planning]
$16.1M
Statewide software/content licensing
$18.1M
TOTAL
$34.6M
This adds the FI contract to the other contracts so the next slide makes more sense.
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6. Provider Contracts Budget
[Numbers in millions of US dollars]
Provider
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Total
Friday Institute1
0.6
1.0
0.7
3.3
MCNC2
0.4
1.6
Various providers3
7.3
1.3
11.2
Totals
8.3
2.7
3.0
2.1
16.1
Via task order per UNC system-DPI master agreement
Via existing DPI-MCNC services agreement
Multiple “cloud” providers selected via competitive procurement
FI work for management and planning. MCNC work is really expansion of CNE. Cloud providers will be bid.
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7. Statewide SW/content Budget
[Numbers in millions of US dollars]
Solution
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Totals
Learning Management System
2.3
3.4
1.7
10.8
Web collaboration
1.1
4.4
Identity Management
0.6
0.3
0.2
0.1
1.2
Learning Objects Repository
5.1
5.0
4.9
3.1
18.1
Lots of work to do to specify the requirements of these tools and services that will require LEA input and vetting. These are the latest in 21st Century learning/strategies and not fully implemented in the majority of districts.
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8. NC Education Cloud Middleware Identity Cloud GW/broker Cost share
Infrastructure
Compute
Storage
Management
Monitoring
Platforms
LMS
Enterprise Apps
Admin Apps
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9. NC Education Cloud Model
This is a conceptual diagram of a cloud infrastructure. IT says that we want compute and storage infrastructure in “real” Tier 4 style data centers where the infrastructure will be safe and secure; we then use the cloud as a content distribution network (CDN) that optimizes content delivery; and we take advantage of adaptive capacity – meaning usage-based cloud models so we pay for what we use and can adapt to peak demands; and all of this realizes that applications are generally all web-delivered.
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10. Cloud-enabled LEA
The basic idea here is to move as much infrastructure as possible out of LEA closets. Note that administration and control of that infrastructure continues to be rooted in LEA to the degree that such administration and control is desirable. Meaning, we can expose as many or as few “knobs” to LEA technical staff as is practical to facilitate smooth and reliable IT operations.
Transition server, appliance, and network control infrastructure to the cloud
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11. Infrastructure Blueprint
Servers housed in Tier-4 data centers
24x7x365 monitoring and support
Service Level Agreements with teeth
Usage-based provisioning and billing
Tiered data backup and recovery
Near-real-time provisioning
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12. A Service Delivery Platform
The NC Education Cloud is a service delivery platform for modern instructional and administration support systems
Initial statewide services
Hosted i-series
MS and Google Enterprise
Learning Management System (LMS)
Web collaboration
Identity management
So this is how we transition from talking about the infrastructure part of the cloud story to the application and content part of the story. Essentially overlay some statewide services on the infrastructure and LMS with companion LOR and web collaboration tools make for a good start. We also recognize that Identity management is a core supporting service required to enable single-sign-on and mediated access.
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13. Services Guiding Principles
No state-managed source code
Single Sign-on enabled (via SAML for instance)
Open interfaces and API’s
Software-as-a-service is the default choice
Strict service level agreements
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14. The State will
Conduct site surveys of LEA infrastructure, applications, and support
Collaborate with LEAs to develop and implement a deployment and operating plan for the NC Education Cloud
Deploy an NC Education Cloud infrastructure and service delivery platform
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15. LEAs Will
Incorporate the state infrastructure NC Education Cloud elements into technology plans
Adopt the infrastructure blueprint
Provide and support student, teacher, administrator access to LMS, web collaboration, and related tools and services
This means LEAs must adopt the highly reliable and available model that we will define in the plan. Some LEAs may say that they can support the Blueprint internally either because they have a data center or for some other reason. Most LEAs will simply use the tools that will be deployed.
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16. LEAs May
Propose pilots based on existing or developing school, LEA, or regional models
Request support related to pre-existing cloud-based service deployments
Provide regional administrative and operating support for particular cloud-delivered services
The real message here is that we will be moving toward state and regional support models. LEAs who have it figured out can consider how they can support other LEAs in the region or the state
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17. Questions? Contact:
Program Lead - Phil Emer,
DPI Lead – Ed Chase,
(Technology directors will be invited to participate in a Webinar in early October to further clarify the Cloud Objectives and to answer questions)
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