The classroom is becoming more interactive every day. Video demands of students and learning tools available online in the cloud underscore the importance of a robust and reliable wireless network on college campuses. Cloud computing can be used to facilitate learning and collaboration for students and faculty. Most high school students now heading to college certainly expect to have easy access to Wi-Fi for their portable devices. The humorous, but extremely revealing results of a survey of more than 500 college students showed that about half of them would rather give up drinking beer than give up their wireless access.[1]
A large part of a student’s experience at a university is now shaped by how well the technology on campus works. “If you go back to 1960, maybe it was your fraternity experience, or maybe it was that one great prof that really cemented the bond. Those things are still relevant today, but you’ve got to add this third dimension, which is did you have a good digital experience or not?” said Alan Cattier, Director of Academic Technologies at Emory University.
Wireless and cloud computing are a necessary foundation to most other uses of technology in university education, at least in the immediate future. “Well, the overlap between the two is that in order to get to the cloud, you have to have a reliable wireless and network connectivity, right?” American University Chief Information Officer David Swartz said in a series of interviews. “Cloud computing promises enormous potential to deliver new services cheaper and faster and maybe even more reliably than we can with current resources. Like any outsourcing arrangement we have to be concerned that it meets the obligation of any agreed level of service and that university policies and followed,” Swartz added.
Wireless: Not easy to define
Wireless, as with any technology can become very complicated when delving into its depths. The terms “wireless”, “WLAN” and “Wi-Fi” are often used interchangeably, but simply put, Wi-Fi is wireless local area network, or LAN, technology that enables laptop PCs, PDAs, and other devices to connect easily to the Internet. Technically known as 802.11 a, b, g and n, Wi-Fi is less expensive and nearing the speeds of standard Ethernet and other common wire-based LAN technologies.[2]
In October 2009 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the group that sets the standards for wireless technology, ratified the 802.11n standard. The 802.11n standard was designed to improve on 802.11g in the amount of bandwidth supported by using multiple wireless signal antennas or MIMO, instead of one antennae.[3]
Bruce Kraemer, chair of the IEEE wireless LAN working group, said the performance improvements will “provide significantly improved data rates and ranges, and will transform the WLAN user experience, and ratification of the amendment sets the stage for a new wave of application innovation and creation of new market opportunities.” In short, 802.11n can go further and travel faster.
AU status in the wireless world
Wireless was initially deployed at American University in April 2002. During summer of 2008 the network was overhauled and the current wireless network infrastructure uses a combination of 802.11a, b and g. [4]According to the AU website the wireless network is not as fast as the wired network or as reliable as the AU wired network, Eaglenet, because it uses radio frequencies to transmit data. Hassan Marvi, director of AU network operations said AU students use the wireless network as their primary network. “But faculty still primarily use the wired network,” he said.
Marvi said the area of wireless coverage encompasses all campus and off campus buildings including some of the outdoor areas. “Access points are installed in the wiring closets in each building. They are connected to a distributed antenna system (DAS) which are attached to the ceiling tiles in every floor of the campus and off campus buildings.”
Plans are already in place to upgrade the current wireless system. Swartz said AU is currently laying the framework for overhauling the wireless network. “We have plans to move to the new N standard and we are currently piloting the new technology,” said Swartz. He also said the rollout will begin on the Tenley campus and AU Law School first, but vendor selection has already occurred and they hope to begin implementation in May.
Initial testing for the N network began in December 2009 and results are positive. “We are still in the process of testing, but are very happy with results so far; faster throughput,” said Marvi.
Cloud computing: vague and symbolic
There is no definitive definition. Ask 21 technology experts and you are likely to get 21 answers.
Three things the experts seem to agree on:
• The term is vague
• It’s all about the Internet
• It represents a transformative shift in computing
Definitions by 21 experts compiled in an online version of the technology industry publication “Cloud Computing Journal,” ranged from “The cloud is a virtualization of resources that maintains and manages itself” to “Cloud computing means: outsourcing, pay-as-you-go, on-demand, somewhere in the Internet.”[5]
Creative Commons by kevindooley
The term is vague but the concept is simple. “Cloud” is a symbolic name for the Internet and cloud computing basically means using someone else’s computing resources – storage space, server space, computer power and Web-based services.
“When you signed up for your first Hotmail account or your first AOL account, you were using someone else’s server to send and store your mail, “ John Abell, Wired.com New York Bureau Chief, said in an interview. “Then some services came along which allowed you to upload video and upload pictures. You’re putting copies of your stuff on some of these services some place… and it remains stored there. You can access it; other people can access it,” Abell said.
There are really two definitions for cloud computing, according to Alistair Croll, who covers the topic for Bitcurrent.com, a Web site that describes itself as part blog, part analyst firm, and part resource site for web operations.[6] “At the most vague and broad level, it means ‘computer stuff I don’t run, but it just works,’ ” Croll said in response to questions submitted to him via email.
“A more narrow, but more accurate from a technical perspective, definition is computing platforms that are available as a utility model,” he said. Clouds are elastic — you can have as much or as little as you need; you pay in small increments based on usage; and they are a shared resource with many people using them simultaneously, Croll explained.
Cloud computing has become shorthand for services delivered over the Internet, according to David Wyld, a professor of management at of Southeastern Louisiana University.
“The basic idea behind cloud computing is that anything that could be done in computing – whether on an individual PC or in a corporate data center – from storing data to communicating via email to collaborating on documents or crunching number on large data sets – can be shifted to the cloud,” Wyld wrote in a paper entitled “Cloud Computing 101: Universities are Migrating to The Cloud for Functionality and Savings.”[7]
What really makes cloud computing distinctive is that it allows people to interact with systems, data and each other with little or no concern about the underlying technology, Wyld wrote
It’s a lot like using a washing machine in a laundromat or leasing a car or living in a house wired with electricity – you don’t own it, you don’t maintain the machine or the power lines, you use it when you need it for as long as you need it and you pay only for what you use.
Types of cloud computing
SaaS (Software as a Service) – Software offered as a hosted service and accessed over the Internet.
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) — Computer infrastructure that is outsourced rather than purchasing new servers, software, data storage space or network equipment.
PaaS (Platform as a Service) – Computing platforms hosted in the cloud and accessed through a browser. Developers can build web applications without installing any tools on their computer and then deploy those applications without any specialized systems administration skills.[8]
Cloud Computing Diagram - Sam Johnston, Creative Commons
History of cloud
The concept of outsourcing computing resources through the Internet is rooted in the 1960s when computer science pioneer John McCarthy predicted that computing would some day be like a public utility. J.C.R. Licklider dreamed of an Intergalactic network in which everyone would be interconnected by computer. Between then and now, the Internet was born and gave rise to the World Wide Web. SalesForce.com became the first company to offer an “on-demand” computing resource over the Internet in 1991.
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Cloud computing spread rapidly in the last decade when technological advances made significant bandwidth possible. The mainstreaming of Web 2.0 technologies fueled the trend with Internet-based tools (Flickr, blog creation sites, Wikipedia, wikis, social media sites, etc) that allowed people to be active contributors rather than passive consumers and to connect with one another. In 2007, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and a number of universities began cloud computer research projects.[9]
Sun Microsystems, Inc., a vendor of cloud computing services, says that it builds on established approaches, concepts and best practices. But what is new, according to a Sun Microsystems white paper is that “cloud computing changes how we invent, develop, deploy scale, update, maintain and pay for applications and the infrastructure on which they run.”[10]
Huge trend
Cloud computing is viewed by many as the next big thing in technology. IT research firm Gartner has placed cloud computing at the top of the “peak of inflated expectations” curve on its 2009 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle. Gartner reports that “[t]he levels of hype around cloud computing in the IT industry are deafening, with every vendor expounding its cloud strategy and variations, such as private cloud computing and hybrid approaches, compounding the hype.”[11]
Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies, 2009
Gartner (August 2009)
Faculty, administrators and students most likely already are using cloud computing. Instead of buying books from the campus bookstore, students can purchase E-books from vendors online. Material for classes can be posted online, making it easily accessible, facilitating collaboration and distance learning, self-directed learning and other new trends in education.
Many students come to the university already steeped in the practice of using clouds. They’re producing media and sharing it on YouTube or Vimeo. They’re sharing information via Google Docs and Dropbox, and Facebook. They’re storing data on Apple’s MobileMe or other Web-based storage facilities. Cloud computing has become a “huge trend” in recent years because it makes it easier to use computers, Wired.com’s Abell said.
Cloud computing has opened up a new world of collaboration, offering educational institutions a more easily accessible platform to work with one another. There are a number of applications being developed that take advantage of cloud computing’s ability to offer people a collaborative environment in which to work.
One such application is IBM’s Cloud Academy, which was launched in November 2009. IBM has invited 17 educational institutions around the world to participate in the Cloud Academy, which aims to allow its members to “create working groups on areas of interest to the education industry, ‘jam’ on new innovations for clouds in education-related areas with IBM developers, work jointly on technical projects across institutions, share research findings, and exchange new ideas for research.”[12]
“A cloud academy member needs to be integrating cloud computing into their infrastructure for productive use,” said Patricia Sullivan, Education Solutions Executive at IBM. Members can create clouds for their own institutions or use them to collaborate with members in other institutions. “In the Middle East, in Qatar, there are three institutions that have created a research cloud using the resources there among the three institutions, as well as partnering outside of their institution with research institutes,” Sullivan said.
Another example of a cloud-based collaboration tool is Wimba, an educational software vendor that bills itself as the “Architects of Collaboration.” Among its products, Wimba offers a virtual classroom tool that allows faculty and students to communicate in real-time over the Internet with audio, video, application sharing, content display and other capabilities. Blackboard, another collaborative learning tool, is an interactive course management program that allows professors and students to share material and have discussions online.
AU in the cloud
American University moved about 15,000 students to Google Apps, which includes Gmail, in 2008. It also uses the FARS (faculty activity reporting system), AU-Abroad (an enrollment system), Wimba, Lynda.com, TracDat (strategic plan tracking and student outcomes assessment), RealVideo hosts the school’s virtual campus tour and the new graduate school admissions and enrollment, and recruiting system is hosted by Hobsons, CIO chief Swartz said. AU is looking at a number of additional uses of cloud computing, including blogging, moving faculty to Gmail and Google Apps or even Lotus Notes in the cloud, he said. “We are also reviewing implementing Blackboard in the cloud, but it is very expensive at present. There are a large number of possible apps being developed for our new Sharepoint portal in development such as document processing, online work-flow, imaging, many more.”
He said AU is also collaborating with other institutions, including the Washington Research Libraries Consortium, a group of about nine university libraries sharing book storage, and electronic repositories and library systems; the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (a fiber-optic network consortium of Washington area higher education and research institutions; Internet-2, for innovative research and applications of networking as well as pooled purchasing of Internet; and the Washington Universities Consortium, with shared Microsoft software licensing and purchasing.
Wireless
College campuses are at the front of the line when it comes to upgrading to 11n technology. In November of 2009, the wireless networking provider Meraki released a study revealing that universities are deploying 11n at a much higher rate than other markets such as government or the private sector. [13] That same survey revealed that the growth of video demand accounted for approximately 3/4 of all bandwidth demands on college campuses. Those surveys help put into perspective the need for colleges to upgrade to wireless N technology. Morrisville State College in New York was the first U.S. school to deploy 11n on a large scale.[14] Soon after, larger schools successfully deployed 11n to meet the growing bandwidth needs of the entire campus body. To date, Duke University has the largest 11n campus network.[15] With a whopping 2,500 access points spread around its sprawling campus. Another early adopter of 11n is Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. [16] The school, founded by the late Jerry Falwell, went completely 11n last year. The campus has more than forty thousand students and required 550 new access points to upgrade from 11g.
John C Abell, Flickr
Setting the standards
The IEEE finally ratified the 802.11n standard after seven years and 11 drafts. “802.11n is very complex technology and the institutions and vendors that belong to the IEEE working groups must come to consensus on how it is supposed to ultimately work,” said Grant Moershel, author and co-founder of WaveGard, a vendor-neutral technology-consulting firm. [17] “Politics are in the mix when there is profit motive and vendors like to push what they think will make them money. So this overhead can slow things down. But ultimately the process produces a good, well-vetted tech solution.”
That’s the new standard, but how does it work?
What exactly does this mean? Moershel explains in simple terms how 802.11n works and why it has changed the frontier of wireless technology:
“First it [802.11n] has the ability to increase data throughput, which is the amount of data one can transmit in any given period of time,” said Moershel. “This translates into faster data transfer for the user and gets closer to what we’ve come to expect from a wired network.”
“Second it [802.11n] intelligently uses to its advantage a naturally occurring condition called multipath where signals bounce off walls and other objects and arrive at a destination at different times. Kind of like an echo,” he said. “It’s the same signal but the receiver hears it more than once. The receiver can use this “echo” to its advantage for faster throughput. Multipath is the enemy of older a, b, g networks. In summary, n networks will allow users to get more throughput at greater distances from an access point.”
In short, instead of getting interference due to walls and other objects such as a, b, and g would, n thrives on them, and it only makes it’s signal stronger and allows it to go further.
Cloud computing
Cloud computing facilitates sharing and collaboration and can expand the classroom far beyond the campus. Here are just are few examples of how institutions, in collaboration with major vendors, are using cloud computing as a means for improving the quality and value of education and providing a model for 21st century learning.
Seventeen institutions in seven countries are taking part in a cloud computing incubation experiment in a program sponsored by IBM’s education unit. The company’s Cloud Academy approaches cloud computing as a transformative technology that is changing the way students, teachers, administrators, faculty members and researchers interact, said Education Solutions Executive Patricia Sullivan.
“One of the things that we talk about is that a member of the IBM Cloud Academy needs to be integrating cloud computing into their infrastructure for productive use. That could be in the teaching or administrative or research areas,” Sullivan said in an interview.
“We have a virtual collaboration cloud set up to allow the members of the Cloud Academy to document what they’re doing, share their ideas, to discuss their thoughts, to share their successes and their failures,” she said.
Sullivan cited North Carolina State University as an example of a school use cloud computing in a productive and collaborative manner. North Carolina State has created a cloud-based Virtual Computing Lab that serves not only its own campus but also other higher education institutions in the state.
The VCL cloud-based service allow users to remotely access certain applications over the Internet, by using a personal computer, notebook, or mobile device from anywhere, at any time.
With an eye on research computing in cloud services, Microsoft Research has formed the eXtreme Computing Group (XCG) helmed by Dan Reed, a former head of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign Computer Science Department. The group could develop its first cloud applications for university researchers by late 2010 or 2011.[18]
In October of 2007, the University of Washington, Google, and IBM teamed up on a project for computer science students to explore cloud computing. Two years later, over 20 universities have joined the IBM and Google cloud initiative. A Web site encourages collaboration among universities in the program detailed in an IBM paper entitled “Education for a Smarter Planet: The Future of Learning.”
“Cloud computing is a long-running trend with a far-out horizon, and in the next 5 to 10 years, it will become a mainstay of the education computing environment,” the paper concluded.[19]
Wireless
With every innovation comes policy. The Internet has long gone unregulated but laws governing network neutrality have been threatening its freedom for many years. But what is network neutrality? Savetheinternet.com, a non-profit organization created to protect Internet freedom, explains network neutrality in simple terms.[20]
Net neutrality is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet.
Net neutrality means that Internet service providers may not discriminate between different kinds of content and applications online. It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the creation and dynamic growth of the Internet is in part the result of strong net neutrality protection.[21] In 2005 the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) repealed longstanding Internet non-discrimination principles. The ACLU argues that immediate restoration of well-established net neutrality principles is necessary to protect freedom and innovation on the Internet.
In October 2009 the FCC approved preliminary net neutrality rules including rules that would apply to wireless broadband networks. If the FCC passes net neutrality rules for wireless, it would represent a major policy shift for the U.S. wireless industry.[22]
The wireless industry has lobbied hard against net neutrality regulation on the grounds that wireless networks are fundamentally different from wired networks because wireless depends on a limited resource – spectrum – to provide enough bandwidth for mobile broadband users.
AU’s David Swartz said net neutrality is often thought of negatively. “Generally, the less intrusion by telecom carriers and the Fed the better in regard to the Internet. The fear is that carriers will create classes of service that will impact rates and who can talk together. However, it needs to be carefully considered in regard to wireless.”
Swartz cites a quote from University of Michigan Law School professor Susan P. Crawford in an article from Imprint Magazine. Crawford, “believes that a neutral Internet must forward packets on a first-come, first served basis, without regard for quality-of-service considerations.”
“If there is no consideration given to quality-of-service then the only way to ensure the quality of synchronous communications over our networks is to over-engineer our networks, which can cost more money,” said Swartz.
According to Grant Moershel, “The question is, will the staff at the school artificially limit things like Facebook because they need room for business critical apps? It’s the local organization that needs to decide by policy how much bandwidth they give various apps.”
Cloud computing
As the attention to cloud computing grows, so do fears about its potential threats to security and privacy. In response, Microsoft has urged Congress to pass legislation regulating cloud computing.
Microsoft has proposed the Cloud Computing Advancement Act, which advocates updates to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (1986) and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (1984) to increase privacy and security measures surrounding cloud computing. In addition, Microsoft recommends the government adopt “truth in cloud computing” legislation that would “require cloud providers to provide consumers with deeper information about the cybersecurity measures they take, including how their information will be stored, accessed, and used by service providers.”[23]
At a keynote speech at the Brookings Institution policy forum “Cloud Computing for Business and Society,” Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel at Microsoft, said, “Microsoft is committed to fostering the responsible development of cloud computing to ensure that data is accessible, safe and secure. We also need government to modernize the laws, adapt them to the cloud, and adopt new measures to protect privacy and promote security. There is no doubt that the future holds even more opportunities than the present, but it also contains critical challenges that we must address now if we want to take full advantage of the potential of cloud computing.”[24]
As technology advances, the laws must evolve to keep up with it. If the Cloud Computing Advancement Act is passed, it may encourage cloud computing vendors to tighten security and privacy policies to ensure they meet the new, stricter standards. It may also reassure businesses that are skittish about using cloud computing with regulatory penalties if vendors do not meet those standards.
Wireless
As with any new technology venture, the transition into a new wireless network is certain to create challenges for American University. A recent survey of almost 800 IT professionals revealed exactly what causes them the most worries about a wireless local area network (WLAN).25 The study revealed some of the biggest concerns involve speed, security, reliability, and consistency.
Data and graphic courtesy of InformationWeek Analytics Wireless LAN Survey of 779 business technology professionals
Base: 542 respondents using wireless LAN technologies
Data and graphic courtesy of InformationWeek Analytics Wireless LAN Survey of 779 business technology professionals
At the onset of American University’s upgrade to N, Swartz is confident that the new network will actually improve reliability and speed for users compared to AU’s current network. However, the crucial step of determining exactly how to protect all that data on a new network remained unresolved at the time this report was compiled. Also, along with hundreds of more wireless access points (WAPs) come the risk of more failures and the possibility of additional technical support. Finally, AU is admittedly “middle of the pack” in terms of its state of wireless when compared to other universities. Now may be the time to set up review procedures so that the university might lead the pack when it comes time to upgrade into the next generation of wireless after N.
Speed and performance
Even before the IEEE officially ratified the N protocol, early university adopters were already seeing big benefits in boosting their networks to N. [26] The protocol is ten times faster than 802.11g with speeds up to 600 megabits per second – not to mention the vast improvement in wireless range. To upgrade to the new N protocol at AU, Swartz says the school will increase from 220 WAPs to 950. The wireless network system company Aruba makes the e access point devices (pictured below). They will be installed inside and outside university academic buildings and dormitories to meet the growing demands of wireless devices.
fair use source: Aruba Networks, Inc. via David Swartz
The move towards N, according to Swartz, is aimed at providing incoming students with what modern educational needs demand. It’s not just the personal preferences of college students that require a higher bandwidth. Their devices now require the higher speeds.
A study released in late 2009 by the network provider Meraki revealed that college students are twice as likely to have N compatible devices versus the general public.[27] The upgrade to wireless N will be necessary to keep up with the ever increasing bandwidth demands of wireless devices, such as laptops and Apple’s latest device. Some IT industry watchers call the iPad a “bandwidth hog” because a myriad of video applications are expected to be developed for the device.[28]
In fact, many technology analysts predict that the iPad will be a common staple on college campuses. Software developers are creating interactive textbooks that will capitalize on the iPad’s ability to integrate all sorts of media, including bandwidth-draining video.[29] As universities look more toward teleconferencing and constantly streaming video channels as educational tools, the demands on wireless networks are only expected to grow.
Many college campuses have already adopted wireless N in anticipation of growing bandwidth demand. American University’s expects to complete its upgrade to a fully wireless N by late 2011 or early 2012. Right now the school is in the “middle of the pack” in regards to its competitive standing against other universities when it comes to wireless capabilities, according to Swartz. Swartz states that AU’s first venture into the wireless Internet arena ten years ago put the school ahead of most others in the US. The question we must now ask is if a full-campus wireless upgrade that may not be in place till 2012 is far too late. A Wi-Fi Alliance survey released in 2009 revealed that high schools students often pick colleges based on wireless accessibility and colleges. Also, colleges are rolling out N networks faster than any other market in the U.S.[30]
Security
Just as college campuses are responsible for the maintaining the physical safety of their students, they must also protect their students in the cyberworld. In fact, universities that neglect to do so could face legal repercussions.[31] Protecting the data of thousands of students on a wireless network is a tremendous challenge.
Hackers who compromised its wireless network once victimized Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. The head of that school’s IT security, Adam Goldstein, explains that hackers are often interested in accomplishing one of the following objectives if they break into a wireless network:
• try to get their hands on sensitive data, such as student personal records or identification
• use laptops or other computers on the network to host viral attacks
• attempt to gain access to the entire campus computer system for any number of sinister reasons
• run a website that can host links to spam web users[32]
An example of the importance of wireless security can be found by looking at Michigan State University. That school was faced with the option of expanding its current network or investing in protecting the network they had. officials there opted for improved security.[33]
At American University, where the roll out to wireless N is about to begin, the school has one major obstacle to overcome, according to Swartz. The school has yet to determine exactly how to secure the upcoming N rollout.
“It’s security, the authentication that’s required to access the network and the posture checking to make sure that if you are accessing the network, you’re not spreading viruses,” explains Swartz, who began pushing for a wireless network upgrade ever since he arrived at AU two years ago. “Aruba (the network provider that AU is using for the N upgrade) has some (security) products, but so do some others so we want to evaluate those products and make sure we make the right decision and get it taken care of quickly. So, that’s our priority right now and once we get it resolved we’ll go gung-ho to replace all our wireless.”
Swartz stresses the importance of selecting the right network security before beginning any large-scale rollout. The good news is that whichever combination of hardware and software is selected it will assuredly be more secure than the current 802.11 protocols in use. Wireless networking with N offers more security over the previous generations’ use of Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP) by instead using what is called Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). So, on a security basis alone, moving to N is the right thing to do.
Reliability and consistency
American University officials are confident that even with more than four times the current amount of wireless access points, the upgraded wireless local access network will actually be more reliable than previous protocols.
“The new WLAN will have multiple controllers, so it will be less prone to widespread outages. Also, if one WAP should go down, the other WAPs will provide signal coverage,” explains Swartz. “It comes with… an excellent management, monitoring, and reporting system.”
Still, university officials should heed the warnings from IT professionals who have been through N upgrades before. Paul DeBeasi, a senior analyst with The Burton Group, a wireless consulting company, recently told SearchNetworking.com that making big additions to your network could bring about big problems. However, he insists, “if you’ve got more modern equipment with controller-based architecture and tools, you’re maintaining the software revisions, you removed your old equipment and you’ve got a good network design … then your staff is not going to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off.” [34]
Finally, Swartz is confident the school will continue its tradition of having multiple Internet service providers (ISPs) in case one fails. As many as four ISPs could give the school the opportunity to keep its N bandwidth even if one of the providers fails.
Cloud computing
While cloud computing has the potential to provide cost savings and increased collaboration opportunities for colleges and universities, there are also many challenges surrounding the new technology. The laws and regulations to which educational institutions are subject place an additional burden on universities to find a way to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing while avoiding the pitfalls. This list of selected risks is aimed at giving a general overview of the items educational institutions should keep in mind when considering the use of cloud computing.While cloud computing has the potential to provide cost savings and increased collaboration opportunities for colleges and universities, there are also many challenges surrounding the new technology. The laws and regulations to which educational institutions are subject place an additional burden on universities to find a way to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing while avoiding the pitfalls. This list of selected risks is aimed at giving a general overview of the items educational institutions should keep in mind when considering the use of cloud computing.
Security
There are many different types of security risks with data stored in the cloud. Information in the cloud can be vulnerable to hacking attacks, servers can fail and cause data to disappear, cloud service vendors can go out of business and stop providing service with little to no warning, to name just a few of the risks associated with cloud computing.
A 2008 survey of 244 IT professionals found that three-quarters felt that security was a significant concern when using cloud computing.[35]
These security fears are well founded, as examples of data disasters and service interruptions that have occurred to businesses and institutions using cloud computing show. A Microsoft server malfunction in October caused a massive loss of customer data for T-Mobile’s Sidekick phones, leading to customer dissatisfaction and lawsuits.[36] Google’s Gmail experienced an outage in September, leaving users of the popular service to wonder for a few hours if they would ever see their E-mail again.[37]
Institutions and businesses accustomed to having control over data housed on-site can be uneasy when confronted with the fact that data can now be housed in the cloud. The data moves from being housed on institution networks to a third party network. A certain amount of trust and careful contract negotiation is required with cloud computing vendors to ensure both parties are clear on what measures are being taken to provide security for the data.
However, some security fears may be unfounded. It’s possible that some vendors providing cloud computing services may have better security than the companies to which they are providing services. “There are tons of cloud breach stories,” Croll says. “One of the reasons for that is that when it happens in the cloud, the victim has someone to yell at. When it happens internally, it gets swept under the rug, so you don’t hear about it. Consider that the majority of computer crime is an inside job; cloud operators aren’t insiders.”
Privacy
Educational institutions face another hurdle in overcoming privacy concerns in cloud computing. Schools and universities are subject to regulations in the Family Education Rights Privacy Act (FERPA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and other laws that require strict control over certain student information to ensure it is kept private.
Cornell’s Tracy Mitrano describes some of the challenges Cornell has faced in remaining compliant with FERPA by saying that Cornell’s data “may be outsourced only to vendors that we have designated, and that are willing to accept designation, as ’school officials’ with ‘legitimate educational interests’ in the data.”[38]
Because the business world does not have to deal with many of the special privacy issues of FERPA and HIPAA, educational institutions can sometimes face difficulty in negotiating contracts that cover the additional burden of maintaining student privacy. Dealing with a vendor that specializes in providing cloud tools or services to educational environments may make it easier to come to an agreement that allows compliance with all the necessary laws.
American University has already faced challenges with student data privacy in its experience with the implementation of AU Abroad’s online enrollment system. Once the enrollment system was up and running, a security scan revealed that there were “numerous severe vulnerabilities” that exposed student data, according to David Swartz. AU worked with the vendor to fix the problem, but the temporary security hole serves as an example of how security flaws can cause privacy problems in a university environment.
Support and training needs
Institutions introducing new cloud-based programs may face challenges in training faculty, staff and students how to use new systems, particularly those who are not tech-savvy. For faculty especially, learning how to use new technology in the classroom can be a challenge. Some faculty may be resistant to the new technology, seeing it as an added burden to their schedule already busy with lesson planning, grading, coaching students, and research.
If an institution introduces new technology — whether it is through cloud computing or not — it should assess whether training needs to take place to ensure the technology is used and used to its greatest advantage.
The support required for this training can be a drain on IT staff resources and should be taken into consideration when deciding to deploy new technology.
“IT directors may have to contend with potential bumps in the road that have more to do with the organizations themselves rather than the technology,” according to Croll. “The downside is that a lot of IT people will have to learn new jobs. This is disruptive stuff. IT won’t be unemployed, but those guys are fossils and don’t want to change,” Croll said. “The smart IT folks I know love clouds, because they understand that they can build things that help the company. But the Luddites are afraid.”
Uncertainty about cost benefits
A brief scan of information on the Internet will tell you that one of the most alluring things about cloud computing is that it can be more cost efficient. Businesses can save money using applications on servers in the cloud by not having to invest in hardware and only paying for actual usage of data in the cloud. But cost savings in the cloud are not always easy to determine and can be an illusion.
The University of Indiana’s position paper on cloud computing lists cost/benefit profile uncertainty as a challenge, saying that “A significant proportion of institutions that have used cloud services indicate the cost/savings realized by using cloud services was estimated incorrectly, and that they have been unable to effectively monitor cost/savings, or have only been able to do so with great difficulty.”[39]
Alan Cattier, Director of Academic Technologies at Emory University, also believes that quantifying the savings of cloud computing can be complicated. He gave an example of Emory’s implementation of iTunes U, saying that it is not necessarily costing anything in terms of the cloud, but that the services Emory is providing around iTunes U do have a cost. “There is a cost because we have people who are authoring podcasts or are in the content distribution business within classes or outside of classes. So where does a cloud service actually begin or end?” said Cattier.
Campus culture and environment
One of the biggest benefits of cloud computing is the opportunity it offers to allow collaboration on a wider scale. Universities on opposite sides of the globe can work together on research in the cloud. However, some universities may face challenges in taking advantage of these online environments if staff is not accustomed to collaborating with people outside of their own group.
Universities that already have a collaborative culture may find it easier to adapt to using cloud-based tools to broaden their collaborative reach. But universities that do not have that culture may need to take the time and effort to foster it in the campus community before these collaborative tools can be used to their full advantage.
Integration into existing IT
IT departments can face challenges in integrating new cloud computing technologies into legacy IT structures.
One challenge, Swartz said, is keeping up with expectations for new solutions while maintaining many of the existing legacy solutions, with the same size staff and number of resources.
Moving to the cloud can also face resistance from IT staff, but some of their concerns may be misplaced. “IT departments are notorious for, properly so, being very cautious and conservative about the changes they make to systems they maintain, but we’ve kind of reached the point now where the cloud concept is pretty mundane,” Abell said. “It’s not an unusual step to take … if the infrastructure is there and you avail yourself of robust partners.”
American University
Demographic Snapshot:
Status – Private, liberal arts institution in Washington, D.C.
Faculty – 591 full-time faculty with more than 90 percent holding the highest degree in their field.
Enrollment – 6,023 undergraduate; 3,297 graduate; 1,667 law; 1,199 non-degree
Average class size: 22 undergraduate; 16.9 graduate
Tuition (2009/2010): undergraduate $17,228 per semester; graduate $1,237 per credit hour
Current wireless network protocol: a/b/g
Age of wireless network: 10 years with upgrades
When campus will use N: 2 years till full implementation
Number of access points on campus: currently adding
Cloud based e-mail: yes
(Source: American University Fast Facts – http://www.american.edu/discoverau/fast-facts.cfm
Source: American University Tuition -http://www.american.edu/finance/studentaccounts/Tuition-and-Fees-Information.cfm
Source: David Swartz, American University Chief Information Officer)
Wireless:
American University has not yet begun rolling out a wireless N network. After about two years of preparation, initial tryouts, and bidding, the Tenley and Law School campuses will be the first to go N by the summer of 2010. A complete campus-wide upgrade will take between 18 months and two years, according to David Swartz.
After some testing of N on campus, American University has selected Aruba Networks as its provider of the next generation of wireless, according to Swartz. Already, schools like Cornell, McGill, and Carnegie Mellon have also selected Aruba to implement their transition to N over other large system providers such as Cisco. Swartz considers those schools good examples to follow when it comes to upgrading to N.
Cloud computing:
American University has seen a definite move in the direction of cloud computing over the last few years and plans to increase its use where it makes economic sense.
It all comes down to dollars and cents for Swartz. He used Blackboard as an example of when to decide to take applications to the cloud. American University currently does not use the cloud-based version of Blackboard because it’s still less expensive to host it on the AU network. But Swartz keeps an eye on the costs and believes that “at some point in time that price point will change. Right now it’s still cheaper for me to do it. But that price will come down, and at some point I’m probably going to say, ‘You guys do it.’”
American University has launched a number of cloud-based technologies over the last few years. Students were moved to cloud-based Google apps, which include Google mail, in the summer of 2008. The university has also implemented a cloud-based faculty activity reporting system, a virtual campus tour from RealVideo, an enrollment system for AU Abroad, and new graduate school admission and enrollment system, Swartz said.
Cloud computing has also been used to further educational and collaborative goals at American University. Online training library Lynda.com was deployed campus-wide in the fall of 2009, available to all AU faculty, staff and students. In addition, the university has launched Wimba, an application designed to enhance collaborative learning on the Web.
In the future, American University is planning to keep an eye on developments in cloud-based applications and adopting them when it makes fiscal sense. Some of the cloud-based applications Swartz is particularly interested in implementing are blogging tools, Gmail and Google apps or Lotus Notes in the cloud for faculty, and cloud-based apps for the new Sharepoint portal, such as document processing, online work flow, and imaging.
George Washington University
Demographic Snapshot:
Status – Private, liberal arts institution in Washington, D.C.
Faculty – 1,576 full-time faculty
Enrollment – 10,000 undergraduate; 14,000 graduate; 1,000 non-degree
Average class size: 28 undergraduate
Tuition (2009/2010): undergraduate $41,610; graduate $1,118.00 per credit hour
Current wireless network: b/g
Age of current network: 2 years
When campus will use 11n: currently deploying 11n
Number of access points: more than 2,500 but only 50 11n WAP’s so far
Cloud based e-mail: yes
(Source: http://www.gwu.edu/explore/aboutgw/facts
source: David Steinour, George Washington University Chief Information Officer)
Wireless:
GWU has started to rollout its wireless N network. IT officials at GWU expect to fully implement N over the next two years. The school has 50 N access points and will be switching out its other 2,500 b/g access points as the hardware is upgraded or finishes out its life cycle.
David Steinour, George Washington University’s chief information officer, said it’s important for the school to “develop and deliver the fastest network possible as soon as possible. Even though I do not consider wireless a replacement for the wired [network] I see it more as an enhancement, we do have to keep it as up to date as possible since the student would rather forego performance for convenience.”
Steinour attributes the growth in video streaming as the greatest demand for increased bandwidth on campus.
Cloud computing:
George Washington University currently uses Google for its student and alumni e-mail. “Outsourcing student and alumni email has worked out very well because it offers better service with larger quotas and the outsourcing provides a significant cost savings,” Steinor said.
The university also uses a cloud-based course management system that provides “an online forum for professors and students to conduct classroom activities, post course work, and share information online,” Steinor said.
To handle security a privacy concerns surrounding cloud computing, GWU has a university compliance committee. “Security measures are reviewed as part of the implementation of new projects to ensure that the University is in compliance with applicable regulations and the controls described in University policy,” Steinour said.
The university performs a return on investment analysis on a project by project basis to ensure its cloud computing applications are cost effective, according to Steinor.
Emory University
Demographic Snapshot:
Status – Private, research university in Atlanta, Ga.
Faculty and staff – 3,124 full-time faculty
Enrollment – 6,980 undergraduate; 5,950 graduate and professional
Average class size: 18
Tuition (2009/2010): undergraduate $37,500; graduate $32,800
Current wireless network: b/g now deploying N
Age of wireless network: more than 4 years
When will campus be all N: within a year
Number of access points: 3,000
Cloud based e-mail: no
(Source:http://www.emory.edu/home/about/factsfigures/index.html
Source: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/atlanta-ga/emory-university-1564
Source: Alan Cattier, Emory University Director of Academic Technologies)
Wireless:
Alan Cattier, the director of academic technologies at Emory, explained that the university is just beginning to replace all the school’s 3,000 access points from b/g to N. Emory is using Aruba systems for the upgrade.
Cattier expects the move to N will actually save the university money in the long run.
“We anticipate that it will be cheaper as a system than our b/g implementation,” he revealed. “So, we are cutting rates at the same time we’re introducing n. And the access points that actually deliver the wireless signal may be more expensive, but the routers and controllers that manage the entire system are significantly more powerful and significantly more comprehensive in coverage than earlier generations. That’s where we’re anticipating a lot of the cost savings.”
Emory’s efforts to expand its wireless bandwidth capabilities coincide with the growing demand from students for more videos through Hulu and other online outlets. “We’re hoping that with N there’s enough bandwidth to do just about anything,” explained Cattier. “And our early test seems very promising on N.”
Cloud computing:
Emory has taken a cautious approach to cloud computing. Although Emory has been evaluating cloud computing for a while, they have used it only to a limited extent at this point, said Cattier.
One of the areas in which Emory has taken the plunge into cloud computing is with its help desk software. Emory is moving toward a software as a service (SaaS) for its help desk “that will be used for problem ticketing and incident management across the university,” according to Cattier.
Emory has also found ways to use cloud computing as a means to facilitate teaching and learning. Emory has eight workstations on campus that offer training through Lynda.com, an online library of software training courses and has deployed a cloud-based version of iTunes U.
In the future, Emory is considering bringing some cloud-based social community tools to campus, Cattier said. Cattier is interested in online tools designed to bring community to the student body. “I think those tools are on the rise and will be one of the ones we consider,” Cattier said.
Emory is also evaluating whether to move to a cloud based e-mail system and is considering Microsoft Live for its e-mail, conferencing, and collaboration environment. But Cattier believes that cloud-based e-mail is low on the priority list for Emory. “There are just too many questions around HIPAA at Emory to really say that there’s a great comfort level with the way we could move forward with a Google or Microsoft (cloud-based e-mail system),” Cattier said.
Boston University
Demographic Snapshot:
Status – Private university in Boston, Mass.
Faculty – 2,622
Enrollment – 18,534 undergraduate, 13,232 graduate and doctoral
Faculty – 2,622
Average class size: 27
Current wireless network protocol: b/g/n
Age of current network: approx 1 year on N
Number of access points: 1,200
Cloud based e-mail: no
(Source: http://www.bu.edu/admissions/bu-basics/fast-facts/
Source: Tracy Schroeder, B.U. Vice President, Information Systems & Technology)
Wireless:
Boston University has already partially implemented N, but only combining it with its already-installed wireless g/b protocols. Also, IT leaders at the school admit that the N coverage is inadequate.
“It’s not big enough. The technology is changing, and changing very rapidly. It’s on a very large urban campus. It’s difficult,” said Tracy Schroeder, vice president of information systems and technology at Boston University. “There aren’t any economies of scale for deploying over a large area, so it’s costly.” She said they’re anticipating a large number of students to arrive on campus with the new iPad in the fall.
“We’re thinking about how can we re-prioritize our investments in wireless leading up to fall to try to avoid a train wreck with students arriving with expectations of wireless blankets in all the dorms,” continued Schroeder. “Not that we’ve said we were going to deliver that and not that they even know that they’re going to want it. They’ve known that they want wireless in the dorms, that’s very clear in the satisfaction surveys. But they don’t know that they’re going to require it or they won’t be able to use their computing device.”
Cloud computing:
Use of cloud computing at Boston University is limited but is expected to increase in the next few years.
The university is using cloud-based service CollegeNet, an SaaS provider for a variety of higher-education related application services, for application processing in three or four of their schools and colleges, according to Schroeder.
Boston University is in the planning stages for a video repository project called BU Tube that leverages the video sharing Web site YouTube. The group developing the project “went several rounds before we got consensus that no, it does not make sense for us to build a YouTube site. It makes sense for us to build a site that leverages YouTube, that incorporates our content and puts a wrapper around it that we can control,” Schroeder said.
As far as the cloud being used as an educational tool for students and faculty, Boston University may have some areas using cloud-based educational tools on a small scale, but “there has not been an institutional targeted investment or strategic initiative with regard to one of those services in the learning space,” according to Schroeder.
What does the future hold for cloud computing at Boston University? The university is looking to move to a cloud-based e-mail system within approximately the next six months, Schroeder said. Schroeder believes that moving to a cloud-based e-mail system has fewer privacy and security risks because e-mail is not typically a secure environment unless purposely encrypted with an additional set of tools. “E-mail is not meant for sensitive information, should not be used for sensitive information. It’s not secure today and it won’t be secure whether it’s hosted by Google or hosted by us. … So I think that’s one of the reasons why e-mail is a leading candidate for using a cloud service because arguably at least the security issues are fewer. They’re not non-existent because there are e-discovery issues and appropriate-use type issues. But they are certainly lesser than, say, using a cloud service for a learning system that is going to store grades,” Schroeder said.
The university is also keeping an eye on “the future role of cloud computing related to server virtualization and hosting, as well as storage and high-performance computing over the longer term,” Schroeder said.
Georgetown University:
Demographic Snapshot:
Status – private Catholic, liberal arts international research university in Washington, D.C.
Faculty – 1,268 full-time faculty; 689 part-time
Enrollment – 7,092 undergraduate; 5,330 graduate; 2,083 law; 813 medical school
Student to Faculty Ratio – 11:1
Tuition (2009/2010): undergraduate $38,616; graduate $36,744
Current wireless network protocol: a/b/g/n
When campus will be all N: unsure, but hoping by July of 2011
Number of access points: around 500 will likely double to 1,000 with upgrade
Cloud based e-mail: yes
(Source: Georgetown University At a Glance – http://explore.georgetown.edu/documents/?DocumentID=742; http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/94/opinions_college08_Georgetown-University_94158.html
Source: Charles Leonhardt, Principal Technologist for the Office of Information Services at Georgetown University)
Wireless:
IT experts at Georgetown University admit that their school is “deficient” when it comes to wireless coverage and infrastructure. Though the school has implemented wireless N in key places, such as the school’s library, there are no plans yet for a full N rollout on campus.
“It’s location specific. Our wireless posture is not nearly what it should be,” according to Charles Leonhardt, the principal technologist in the Office of Information Services at GU. “We have wireless coverage in most common spaces such as the library and student center. Most, but not all of the classrooms. And most, but not all of the dormitories. A real frustration for most people… is that wireless is not ubiquitous and furthermore, wireless is not on a common platform.”
Leonhardt points out that upgrading a wireless network is expensive and times are tough at his school and most other schools across the country. Still, the upgrade is now a priority at Georgetown.
“It’s a very important institutional priority to fund a major upgrade to the wireless infrastructure campus wide and more importantly fund a major upgrade to the campus network that lies underneath the wireless network,” Leonhardt explained.
“I think one of the problems with upgrading the wireless network is that a lot of the infrastructure sitting the buildings themselves is less than satisfactory. One of the reasons we haven’t put in wireless ubiquitously is we know the infrastructure can’t handle it.”
Leonhardt is confident that the university will allocate the approximately $9 million cost to upgrade the school’s network. A budget decision is expected this coming July and full implementation, Leonhardt expects, will.
Cloud computing
Georgetown University has found a number of ways to use cloud-based applications on campus for students, faculty and staff.
The university moved to Google for student e-mail in 2009 but has not moved faculty and staff e-mail yet, according to Leonhardt. Several grad schools at Georgetown have a cloud-based admissions process, which feeds into the student system to process financial aid.
Georgetown is using iTunes U for broadcast events or certain lectures to the world outside of campus. However, the faculty is not currently using it as a method of distributing information or lessons to students, Leonhardt said. Also in use at the university is Elluminate Live, which is an online tool that allows people to collaborate through audio and posting documents or PowerPoint presentations to share. Elluminate is fully integrated with Blackboard.
There is limited deployment of cloud-based online training services at Georgetown. There may be some individual departments using online training tools, but there is no campus-wide effort in that area, according to Leonhardt.
One of the more innovative uses of cloud computing at Georgetown is the creation of a cloud-based online community for alumni. Alumni can post online class notes, news and jobs for students still attending Georgetown. “The alumni can express online either what their fields of expertise are or what companies they work for and whether they’re interested in providing internships or work opportunities,” Leonhardt said. Students can then log in and search for alumni in particular locations or fields and contact them directly. The interaction between classes facilitated by these job postings is a way that Georgetown creates community beyond the walls of the campus and between classes of different years.
Georgetown is considering a move to a cloud-based HR, payroll, and benefits system in the near future. But other than that, they have no plans at this time for expanding their cloud-based systems, Leonhardt said.
Overall wireless summary of competitive analysis:
American University is in last place when it comes to the initial rollout of wireless N when compared to the other schools. Despite some testing at AU, no formal installation of N has begun. All of the other schools have started implementing the N protocol, even if on a very small scale. Ultimately, though, AU could wind up completing its upgrade around the same time as many of the other schools. AU’s N upgrade is expected to be completed in up to two years from now George Washington University, for example, also does not expect to finish its N upgrade for up to two years from now. So, even though other schools have gotten a jump-start on the transition to N, AU and other schools may end up finishing its N within just months of each other.
It is most obviously a competitive threat and weakness that other schools might complete their wireless N installations and promote that fact well before American University. If that is the case, prospective students with heavy bandwidth demanding devices such as the iPad could be swayed to pursue other schools. This presents AU with an opportunity to speed up its implementation of N and become more competitive.
However, the fact that American University has a long-term N plan in place is actually a strength against some other schools. Campuses such as Syracuse, Georgetown, and Boston University, which have already begun installing wireless access points, still seem very unsure about when their rollouts will be complete. Also, American’s decision to hold off on beginning its installation of N until the best security methods are decided on could be seen as both a weakness and a strength. Although the testing and research of security methods on N has obviously slowed the school’s implementation of a new network, it could also be perceived as a strength by students who want to make sure best practices are in place to protect their data.
Overall cloud computing summary of competitive analysis:
From the data obtained from the surveyed schools, American University appears to be at least matching other universities, if not doing better, in the move to cloud computing.
Other schools (Boston, Emory) are getting a slower start because of either the size of the student body or a general wariness of the cloud computing environment and concerns over privacy and security.
American University is doing a particularly good job at looking for ways to leverage cloud computing as a learning and teaching tool, as evidenced by its campus-wide implementation of Lynda.com and Wimba. Using cloud computing applications to facilitate teaching and learning is an area that will probably increase dramatically as it offers educational institutions new ways to collaborate both within the university environment and externally with other universities around the world. The use of cloud-based collaboration areas, such as IBM’s Cloud Academy, can facilitate research, broaden the horizons of students and faculty, and serve to promote American University to a broader audience.
Some universities surveyed are successfully using cloud computing as a means for social networking and establishing community outside the walls of the campus. Boston University’s creation of BU Tube and Georgetown’s deployment of its online alumni community are great examples of social networking in the cloud. Online communities like those at Boston University and Georgetown can lead to a greater sense of campus community and student loyalty — and perhaps a greater amount of loyal alumni donations in the future.
Below are recommendations that will help American University improve its use of wireless and cloud computing technology.
Speed up the 802.11n rollout and expedite development of security plans based on best practices.
Form a wireless committee that meets quarterly to on focus on latest technologies and the status of wireless on campus to stay “ahead of the pack.”
Examine management tools and prepare IT staff for roll out of four times the amount of WiFi access points vs. hundreds now.
Don’t lose sight of the learning and collaborative aspects of cloud computing. IT staff may be focused more on technology (such as e-mail), and faculty may not be aware that it exists — the learning and collaborative benefits of cloud computing may get lost in the shuffle.
Continue to evaluate the cost benefits of moving applications to cloud computing to make sure the university is getting a good return on investment on them.
Increase collaboration with colleagues at other institutions to share ideas, best practices, and tales of caution
Moving applications to the clouds creates an opportunity to reallocate IT staff to develop innovative solutions to meeting the AU community’s technology needs.
More virtualization (cost effective; reliable, secure infrastructure without heavy capital investments; better use of IT team skills and resources; green savings).
Become actively engaged in the debate surrounding network neutrality and involve the student body.
Regularly survey students, staff and faculty to gauge their feelings about technology at American University.
There are both immediate and long term actions American University can take to improve its state of wireless connectivity and cloud computing. Although the school is making significant strides in rolling out its new 11n network within two years, more effort should be made to make that transition sooner. An explosion of “bandwidth hog” devices such as the Apple iPad could put serious strains on the school’s current a/b/g network. An upgrade completion date of no later than September of 2011 would make the school more prepared for any unanticipated spikes in bandwidth demand. To begin an N rollout, the school must first decide on the best security methods to protect data on the upgraded network. While this is important, a decision must be made as quickly as possible so that a full roll out might be implemented sooner.
Also, as part of the university’s efforts to remain competitive and attract the best and brightest students, being “middle of the pack” in terms of wireless networking capabilities simply isn’t good enough. In order to move to the front of the pack for the next upgrade after N, whatever that may be, it would be in the university’s best interests to organize a committee focused solely on wireless networking on campus. That committee should meet quarterly to discuss and recommend any changes to the current state of wireless and work towards early adoption of the next breakthroughs in wireless technology.
The university staff and officials should not lose site of the fact that cloud computing has a lot of potential as a learning/teaching/collaboration tool. — make a distinction between cloud computing for “technology” (like e-mail systems), and cloud computing that facilitates learning and collaboration. Recommend that American keep an eye out for what is happening with cloud computing that is aimed at facilitating collaboration (like IBM Cloud Academy). It could be a great opportunity to pool academic resources and work with people in other institutions or even within the same institution.
[31] security weakness as a liability
Mark Luker and Rodney Petersen (2003). Computer and Network Security In Higher Education: A Publication of Educause. Retreived January 28, 2010, from ttp://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/pub7008h.pdfUniversity of Michigan
[35] Frank Gens (October 2, 2008). IT Cloud Services User Survey, pt. 2: Top Benefits & Challenges. IDC Blog. Retrieved February 15, 2010 http://blogs.idc.com/ie/?p=210
Wireless & Cloud Computing Technologies
Introduction
The classroom is becoming more interactive every day. Video demands of students and learning tools available online in the cloud underscore the importance of a robust and reliable wireless network on college campuses. Cloud computing can be used to facilitate learning and collaboration for students and faculty. Most high school students now heading to college certainly expect to have easy access to Wi-Fi for their portable devices. The humorous, but extremely revealing results of a survey of more than 500 college students showed that about half of them would rather give up drinking beer than give up their wireless access.[1]
A large part of a student’s experience at a university is now shaped by how well the technology on campus works. “If you go back to 1960, maybe it was your fraternity experience, or maybe it was that one great prof that really cemented the bond. Those things are still relevant today, but you’ve got to add this third dimension, which is did you have a good digital experience or not?” said Alan Cattier, Director of Academic Technologies at Emory University.
Wireless and cloud computing are a necessary foundation to most other uses of technology in university education, at least in the immediate future. “Well, the overlap between the two is that in order to get to the cloud, you have to have a reliable wireless and network connectivity, right?” American University Chief Information Officer David Swartz said in a series of interviews. “Cloud computing promises enormous potential to deliver new services cheaper and faster and maybe even more reliably than we can with current resources. Like any outsourcing arrangement we have to be concerned that it meets the obligation of any agreed level of service and that university policies and followed,” Swartz added.
Key Findings
——————————————————————-
Definition, History & Current Status | Best Practices |
Policy & Controversies | Challenges | Competitive Analysis
Definition, History & Current Status
Wireless: Not easy to define
Wireless, as with any technology can become very complicated when delving into its depths. The terms “wireless”, “WLAN” and “Wi-Fi” are often used interchangeably, but simply put, Wi-Fi is wireless local area network, or LAN, technology that enables laptop PCs, PDAs, and other devices to connect easily to the Internet. Technically known as 802.11 a, b, g and n, Wi-Fi is less expensive and nearing the speeds of standard Ethernet and other common wire-based LAN technologies.[2]
In October 2009 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the group that sets the standards for wireless technology, ratified the 802.11n standard. The 802.11n standard was designed to improve on 802.11g in the amount of bandwidth supported by using multiple wireless signal antennas or MIMO, instead of one antennae.[3]
Bruce Kraemer, chair of the IEEE wireless LAN working group, said the performance improvements will “provide significantly improved data rates and ranges, and will transform the WLAN user experience, and ratification of the amendment sets the stage for a new wave of application innovation and creation of new market opportunities.” In short, 802.11n can go further and travel faster.
AU status in the wireless world
Wireless was initially deployed at American University in April 2002. During summer of 2008 the network was overhauled and the current wireless network infrastructure uses a combination of 802.11a, b and g. [4]According to the AU website the wireless network is not as fast as the wired network or as reliable as the AU wired network, Eaglenet, because it uses radio frequencies to transmit data. Hassan Marvi, director of AU network operations said AU students use the wireless network as their primary network. “But faculty still primarily use the wired network,” he said.
Marvi said the area of wireless coverage encompasses all campus and off campus buildings including some of the outdoor areas. “Access points are installed in the wiring closets in each building. They are connected to a distributed antenna system (DAS) which are attached to the ceiling tiles in every floor of the campus and off campus buildings.”
Plans are already in place to upgrade the current wireless system. Swartz said AU is currently laying the framework for overhauling the wireless network. “We have plans to move to the new N standard and we are currently piloting the new technology,” said Swartz. He also said the rollout will begin on the Tenley campus and AU Law School first, but vendor selection has already occurred and they hope to begin implementation in May.
Initial testing for the N network began in December 2009 and results are positive. “We are still in the process of testing, but are very happy with results so far; faster throughput,” said Marvi.
Cloud computing: vague and symbolic
There is no definitive definition. Ask 21 technology experts and you are likely to get 21 answers.
Three things the experts seem to agree on:
• The term is vague
• It’s all about the Internet
• It represents a transformative shift in computing
Definitions by 21 experts compiled in an online version of the technology industry publication “Cloud Computing Journal,” ranged from “The cloud is a virtualization of resources that maintains and manages itself” to “Cloud computing means: outsourcing, pay-as-you-go, on-demand, somewhere in the Internet.”[5]
Creative Commons by kevindooley
The term is vague but the concept is simple. “Cloud” is a symbolic name for the Internet and cloud computing basically means using someone else’s computing resources – storage space, server space, computer power and Web-based services.
“When you signed up for your first Hotmail account or your first AOL account, you were using someone else’s server to send and store your mail, “ John Abell, Wired.com New York Bureau Chief, said in an interview. “Then some services came along which allowed you to upload video and upload pictures. You’re putting copies of your stuff on some of these services some place… and it remains stored there. You can access it; other people can access it,” Abell said.
There are really two definitions for cloud computing, according to Alistair Croll, who covers the topic for Bitcurrent.com, a Web site that describes itself as part blog, part analyst firm, and part resource site for web operations.[6] “At the most vague and broad level, it means ‘computer stuff I don’t run, but it just works,’ ” Croll said in response to questions submitted to him via email.
“A more narrow, but more accurate from a technical perspective, definition is computing platforms that are available as a utility model,” he said. Clouds are elastic — you can have as much or as little as you need; you pay in small increments based on usage; and they are a shared resource with many people using them simultaneously, Croll explained.
Cloud computing has become shorthand for services delivered over the Internet, according to David Wyld, a professor of management at of Southeastern Louisiana University.
“The basic idea behind cloud computing is that anything that could be done in computing – whether on an individual PC or in a corporate data center – from storing data to communicating via email to collaborating on documents or crunching number on large data sets – can be shifted to the cloud,” Wyld wrote in a paper entitled “Cloud Computing 101: Universities are Migrating to The Cloud for Functionality and Savings.”[7]
What really makes cloud computing distinctive is that it allows people to interact with systems, data and each other with little or no concern about the underlying technology, Wyld wrote
It’s a lot like using a washing machine in a laundromat or leasing a car or living in a house wired with electricity – you don’t own it, you don’t maintain the machine or the power lines, you use it when you need it for as long as you need it and you pay only for what you use.
Types of cloud computing
Cloud Computing Diagram - Sam Johnston, Creative Commons
History of cloud
The concept of outsourcing computing resources through the Internet is rooted in the 1960s when computer science pioneer John McCarthy predicted that computing would some day be like a public utility. J.C.R. Licklider dreamed of an Intergalactic network in which everyone would be interconnected by computer. Between then and now, the Internet was born and gave rise to the World Wide Web. SalesForce.com became the first company to offer an “on-demand” computing resource over the Internet in 1991.
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Cloud computing spread rapidly in the last decade when technological advances made significant bandwidth possible. The mainstreaming of Web 2.0 technologies fueled the trend with Internet-based tools (Flickr, blog creation sites, Wikipedia, wikis, social media sites, etc) that allowed people to be active contributors rather than passive consumers and to connect with one another. In 2007, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and a number of universities began cloud computer research projects.[9]
Sun Microsystems, Inc., a vendor of cloud computing services, says that it builds on established approaches, concepts and best practices. But what is new, according to a Sun Microsystems white paper is that “cloud computing changes how we invent, develop, deploy scale, update, maintain and pay for applications and the infrastructure on which they run.”[10]
Huge trend
Cloud computing is viewed by many as the next big thing in technology. IT research firm Gartner has placed cloud computing at the top of the “peak of inflated expectations” curve on its 2009 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle. Gartner reports that “[t]he levels of hype around cloud computing in the IT industry are deafening, with every vendor expounding its cloud strategy and variations, such as private cloud computing and hybrid approaches, compounding the hype.”[11]
Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies, 2009
Gartner (August 2009)
Faculty, administrators and students most likely already are using cloud computing. Instead of buying books from the campus bookstore, students can purchase E-books from vendors online. Material for classes can be posted online, making it easily accessible, facilitating collaboration and distance learning, self-directed learning and other new trends in education.
Many students come to the university already steeped in the practice of using clouds. They’re producing media and sharing it on YouTube or Vimeo. They’re sharing information via Google Docs and Dropbox, and Facebook. They’re storing data on Apple’s MobileMe or other Web-based storage facilities. Cloud computing has become a “huge trend” in recent years because it makes it easier to use computers, Wired.com’s Abell said.
Cloud computing has opened up a new world of collaboration, offering educational institutions a more easily accessible platform to work with one another. There are a number of applications being developed that take advantage of cloud computing’s ability to offer people a collaborative environment in which to work.
One such application is IBM’s Cloud Academy, which was launched in November 2009. IBM has invited 17 educational institutions around the world to participate in the Cloud Academy, which aims to allow its members to “create working groups on areas of interest to the education industry, ‘jam’ on new innovations for clouds in education-related areas with IBM developers, work jointly on technical projects across institutions, share research findings, and exchange new ideas for research.”[12]
“A cloud academy member needs to be integrating cloud computing into their infrastructure for productive use,” said Patricia Sullivan, Education Solutions Executive at IBM. Members can create clouds for their own institutions or use them to collaborate with members in other institutions. “In the Middle East, in Qatar, there are three institutions that have created a research cloud using the resources there among the three institutions, as well as partnering outside of their institution with research institutes,” Sullivan said.
Another example of a cloud-based collaboration tool is Wimba, an educational software vendor that bills itself as the “Architects of Collaboration.” Among its products, Wimba offers a virtual classroom tool that allows faculty and students to communicate in real-time over the Internet with audio, video, application sharing, content display and other capabilities. Blackboard, another collaborative learning tool, is an interactive course management program that allows professors and students to share material and have discussions online.
AU in the cloud
American University moved about 15,000 students to Google Apps, which includes Gmail, in 2008. It also uses the FARS (faculty activity reporting system), AU-Abroad (an enrollment system), Wimba, Lynda.com, TracDat (strategic plan tracking and student outcomes assessment), RealVideo hosts the school’s virtual campus tour and the new graduate school admissions and enrollment, and recruiting system is hosted by Hobsons, CIO chief Swartz said. AU is looking at a number of additional uses of cloud computing, including blogging, moving faculty to Gmail and Google Apps or even Lotus Notes in the cloud, he said. “We are also reviewing implementing Blackboard in the cloud, but it is very expensive at present. There are a large number of possible apps being developed for our new Sharepoint portal in development such as document processing, online work-flow, imaging, many more.”
He said AU is also collaborating with other institutions, including the Washington Research Libraries Consortium, a group of about nine university libraries sharing book storage, and electronic repositories and library systems; the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (a fiber-optic network consortium of Washington area higher education and research institutions; Internet-2, for innovative research and applications of networking as well as pooled purchasing of Internet; and the Washington Universities Consortium, with shared Microsoft software licensing and purchasing.
Best Practices
Wireless
College campuses are at the front of the line when it comes to upgrading to 11n technology. In November of 2009, the wireless networking provider Meraki released a study revealing that universities are deploying 11n at a much higher rate than other markets such as government or the private sector. [13] That same survey revealed that the growth of video demand accounted for approximately 3/4 of all bandwidth demands on college campuses. Those surveys help put into perspective the need for colleges to upgrade to wireless N technology. Morrisville State College in New York was the first U.S. school to deploy 11n on a large scale.[14] Soon after, larger schools successfully deployed 11n to meet the growing bandwidth needs of the entire campus body. To date, Duke University has the largest 11n campus network.[15] With a whopping 2,500 access points spread around its sprawling campus. Another early adopter of 11n is Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. [16] The school, founded by the late Jerry Falwell, went completely 11n last year. The campus has more than forty thousand students and required 550 new access points to upgrade from 11g.
John C Abell, Flickr
Setting the standards
The IEEE finally ratified the 802.11n standard after seven years and 11 drafts. “802.11n is very complex technology and the institutions and vendors that belong to the IEEE working groups must come to consensus on how it is supposed to ultimately work,” said Grant Moershel, author and co-founder of WaveGard, a vendor-neutral technology-consulting firm. [17] “Politics are in the mix when there is profit motive and vendors like to push what they think will make them money. So this overhead can slow things down. But ultimately the process produces a good, well-vetted tech solution.”
That’s the new standard, but how does it work?
What exactly does this mean? Moershel explains in simple terms how 802.11n works and why it has changed the frontier of wireless technology:
“First it [802.11n] has the ability to increase data throughput, which is the amount of data one can transmit in any given period of time,” said Moershel. “This translates into faster data transfer for the user and gets closer to what we’ve come to expect from a wired network.”
“Second it [802.11n] intelligently uses to its advantage a naturally occurring condition called multipath where signals bounce off walls and other objects and arrive at a destination at different times. Kind of like an echo,” he said. “It’s the same signal but the receiver hears it more than once. The receiver can use this “echo” to its advantage for faster throughput. Multipath is the enemy of older a, b, g networks. In summary, n networks will allow users to get more throughput at greater distances from an access point.”
In short, instead of getting interference due to walls and other objects such as a, b, and g would, n thrives on them, and it only makes it’s signal stronger and allows it to go further.
Data and graphics courtesy of InformationWeek Analytics Wireless LAN Survey of 779 business technology professionals
Cloud computing
Cloud computing facilitates sharing and collaboration and can expand the classroom far beyond the campus. Here are just are few examples of how institutions, in collaboration with major vendors, are using cloud computing as a means for improving the quality and value of education and providing a model for 21st century learning.
Seventeen institutions in seven countries are taking part in a cloud computing incubation experiment in a program sponsored by IBM’s education unit. The company’s Cloud Academy approaches cloud computing as a transformative technology that is changing the way students, teachers, administrators, faculty members and researchers interact, said Education Solutions Executive Patricia Sullivan.
“One of the things that we talk about is that a member of the IBM Cloud Academy needs to be integrating cloud computing into their infrastructure for productive use. That could be in the teaching or administrative or research areas,” Sullivan said in an interview.
“We have a virtual collaboration cloud set up to allow the members of the Cloud Academy to document what they’re doing, share their ideas, to discuss their thoughts, to share their successes and their failures,” she said.
Sullivan cited North Carolina State University as an example of a school use cloud computing in a productive and collaborative manner. North Carolina State has created a cloud-based Virtual Computing Lab that serves not only its own campus but also other higher education institutions in the state.
The VCL cloud-based service allow users to remotely access certain applications over the Internet, by using a personal computer, notebook, or mobile device from anywhere, at any time.
With an eye on research computing in cloud services, Microsoft Research has formed the eXtreme Computing Group (XCG) helmed by Dan Reed, a former head of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign Computer Science Department. The group could develop its first cloud applications for university researchers by late 2010 or 2011.[18]
In October of 2007, the University of Washington, Google, and IBM teamed up on a project for computer science students to explore cloud computing. Two years later, over 20 universities have joined the IBM and Google cloud initiative. A Web site encourages collaboration among universities in the program detailed in an IBM paper entitled “Education for a Smarter Planet: The Future of Learning.”
“Cloud computing is a long-running trend with a far-out horizon, and in the next 5 to 10 years, it will become a mainstay of the education computing environment,” the paper concluded.[19]
Policy and Controversies
Wireless
With every innovation comes policy. The Internet has long gone unregulated but laws governing network neutrality have been threatening its freedom for many years. But what is network neutrality? Savetheinternet.com, a non-profit organization created to protect Internet freedom, explains network neutrality in simple terms.[20]
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the creation and dynamic growth of the Internet is in part the result of strong net neutrality protection.[21] In 2005 the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) repealed longstanding Internet non-discrimination principles. The ACLU argues that immediate restoration of well-established net neutrality principles is necessary to protect freedom and innovation on the Internet.
In October 2009 the FCC approved preliminary net neutrality rules including rules that would apply to wireless broadband networks. If the FCC passes net neutrality rules for wireless, it would represent a major policy shift for the U.S. wireless industry.[22]
The wireless industry has lobbied hard against net neutrality regulation on the grounds that wireless networks are fundamentally different from wired networks because wireless depends on a limited resource – spectrum – to provide enough bandwidth for mobile broadband users.
AU’s David Swartz said net neutrality is often thought of negatively. “Generally, the less intrusion by telecom carriers and the Fed the better in regard to the Internet. The fear is that carriers will create classes of service that will impact rates and who can talk together. However, it needs to be carefully considered in regard to wireless.”
Swartz cites a quote from University of Michigan Law School professor Susan P. Crawford in an article from Imprint Magazine. Crawford, “believes that a neutral Internet must forward packets on a first-come, first served basis, without regard for quality-of-service considerations.”
“If there is no consideration given to quality-of-service then the only way to ensure the quality of synchronous communications over our networks is to over-engineer our networks, which can cost more money,” said Swartz.
According to Grant Moershel, “The question is, will the staff at the school artificially limit things like Facebook because they need room for business critical apps? It’s the local organization that needs to decide by policy how much bandwidth they give various apps.”
Cloud computing
As the attention to cloud computing grows, so do fears about its potential threats to security and privacy. In response, Microsoft has urged Congress to pass legislation regulating cloud computing.
Microsoft has proposed the Cloud Computing Advancement Act, which advocates updates to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (1986) and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (1984) to increase privacy and security measures surrounding cloud computing. In addition, Microsoft recommends the government adopt “truth in cloud computing” legislation that would “require cloud providers to provide consumers with deeper information about the cybersecurity measures they take, including how their information will be stored, accessed, and used by service providers.”[23]
At a keynote speech at the Brookings Institution policy forum “Cloud Computing for Business and Society,” Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel at Microsoft, said, “Microsoft is committed to fostering the responsible development of cloud computing to ensure that data is accessible, safe and secure. We also need government to modernize the laws, adapt them to the cloud, and adopt new measures to protect privacy and promote security. There is no doubt that the future holds even more opportunities than the present, but it also contains critical challenges that we must address now if we want to take full advantage of the potential of cloud computing.”[24]
As technology advances, the laws must evolve to keep up with it. If the Cloud Computing Advancement Act is passed, it may encourage cloud computing vendors to tighten security and privacy policies to ensure they meet the new, stricter standards. It may also reassure businesses that are skittish about using cloud computing with regulatory penalties if vendors do not meet those standards.
Challenges
Wireless
As with any new technology venture, the transition into a new wireless network is certain to create challenges for American University. A recent survey of almost 800 IT professionals revealed exactly what causes them the most worries about a wireless local area network (WLAN).25 The study revealed some of the biggest concerns involve speed, security, reliability, and consistency.
Data and graphic courtesy of InformationWeek Analytics Wireless LAN Survey of 779 business technology professionals
Base: 542 respondents using wireless LAN technologies
Data and graphic courtesy of InformationWeek Analytics Wireless LAN Survey of 779 business technology professionals
At the onset of American University’s upgrade to N, Swartz is confident that the new network will actually improve reliability and speed for users compared to AU’s current network. However, the crucial step of determining exactly how to protect all that data on a new network remained unresolved at the time this report was compiled. Also, along with hundreds of more wireless access points (WAPs) come the risk of more failures and the possibility of additional technical support. Finally, AU is admittedly “middle of the pack” in terms of its state of wireless when compared to other universities. Now may be the time to set up review procedures so that the university might lead the pack when it comes time to upgrade into the next generation of wireless after N.
Speed and performance
Even before the IEEE officially ratified the N protocol, early university adopters were already seeing big benefits in boosting their networks to N. [26] The protocol is ten times faster than 802.11g with speeds up to 600 megabits per second – not to mention the vast improvement in wireless range. To upgrade to the new N protocol at AU, Swartz says the school will increase from 220 WAPs to 950. The wireless network system company Aruba makes the e access point devices (pictured below). They will be installed inside and outside university academic buildings and dormitories to meet the growing demands of wireless devices.
fair use source: Aruba Networks, Inc. via David Swartz
The move towards N, according to Swartz, is aimed at providing incoming students with what modern educational needs demand. It’s not just the personal preferences of college students that require a higher bandwidth. Their devices now require the higher speeds.
A study released in late 2009 by the network provider Meraki revealed that college students are twice as likely to have N compatible devices versus the general public.[27] The upgrade to wireless N will be necessary to keep up with the ever increasing bandwidth demands of wireless devices, such as laptops and Apple’s latest device. Some IT industry watchers call the iPad a “bandwidth hog” because a myriad of video applications are expected to be developed for the device.[28]
In fact, many technology analysts predict that the iPad will be a common staple on college campuses. Software developers are creating interactive textbooks that will capitalize on the iPad’s ability to integrate all sorts of media, including bandwidth-draining video.[29] As universities look more toward teleconferencing and constantly streaming video channels as educational tools, the demands on wireless networks are only expected to grow.
Many college campuses have already adopted wireless N in anticipation of growing bandwidth demand. American University’s expects to complete its upgrade to a fully wireless N by late 2011 or early 2012. Right now the school is in the “middle of the pack” in regards to its competitive standing against other universities when it comes to wireless capabilities, according to Swartz. Swartz states that AU’s first venture into the wireless Internet arena ten years ago put the school ahead of most others in the US. The question we must now ask is if a full-campus wireless upgrade that may not be in place till 2012 is far too late. A Wi-Fi Alliance survey released in 2009 revealed that high schools students often pick colleges based on wireless accessibility and colleges. Also, colleges are rolling out N networks faster than any other market in the U.S.[30]
Security
Just as college campuses are responsible for the maintaining the physical safety of their students, they must also protect their students in the cyberworld. In fact, universities that neglect to do so could face legal repercussions.[31] Protecting the data of thousands of students on a wireless network is a tremendous challenge.
Hackers who compromised its wireless network once victimized Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. The head of that school’s IT security, Adam Goldstein, explains that hackers are often interested in accomplishing one of the following objectives if they break into a wireless network:
• try to get their hands on sensitive data, such as student personal records or identification
• use laptops or other computers on the network to host viral attacks
• attempt to gain access to the entire campus computer system for any number of sinister reasons
• run a website that can host links to spam web users[32]
An example of the importance of wireless security can be found by looking at Michigan State University. That school was faced with the option of expanding its current network or investing in protecting the network they had. officials there opted for improved security.[33]
At American University, where the roll out to wireless N is about to begin, the school has one major obstacle to overcome, according to Swartz. The school has yet to determine exactly how to secure the upcoming N rollout.
“It’s security, the authentication that’s required to access the network and the posture checking to make sure that if you are accessing the network, you’re not spreading viruses,” explains Swartz, who began pushing for a wireless network upgrade ever since he arrived at AU two years ago. “Aruba (the network provider that AU is using for the N upgrade) has some (security) products, but so do some others so we want to evaluate those products and make sure we make the right decision and get it taken care of quickly. So, that’s our priority right now and once we get it resolved we’ll go gung-ho to replace all our wireless.”
Swartz stresses the importance of selecting the right network security before beginning any large-scale rollout. The good news is that whichever combination of hardware and software is selected it will assuredly be more secure than the current 802.11 protocols in use. Wireless networking with N offers more security over the previous generations’ use of Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP) by instead using what is called Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). So, on a security basis alone, moving to N is the right thing to do.
Reliability and consistency
American University officials are confident that even with more than four times the current amount of wireless access points, the upgraded wireless local access network will actually be more reliable than previous protocols.
“The new WLAN will have multiple controllers, so it will be less prone to widespread outages. Also, if one WAP should go down, the other WAPs will provide signal coverage,” explains Swartz. “It comes with… an excellent management, monitoring, and reporting system.”
Still, university officials should heed the warnings from IT professionals who have been through N upgrades before. Paul DeBeasi, a senior analyst with The Burton Group, a wireless consulting company, recently told SearchNetworking.com that making big additions to your network could bring about big problems. However, he insists, “if you’ve got more modern equipment with controller-based architecture and tools, you’re maintaining the software revisions, you removed your old equipment and you’ve got a good network design … then your staff is not going to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off.” [34]
Finally, Swartz is confident the school will continue its tradition of having multiple Internet service providers (ISPs) in case one fails. As many as four ISPs could give the school the opportunity to keep its N bandwidth even if one of the providers fails.
Cloud computing
While cloud computing has the potential to provide cost savings and increased collaboration opportunities for colleges and universities, there are also many challenges surrounding the new technology. The laws and regulations to which educational institutions are subject place an additional burden on universities to find a way to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing while avoiding the pitfalls. This list of selected risks is aimed at giving a general overview of the items educational institutions should keep in mind when considering the use of cloud computing.While cloud computing has the potential to provide cost savings and increased collaboration opportunities for colleges and universities, there are also many challenges surrounding the new technology. The laws and regulations to which educational institutions are subject place an additional burden on universities to find a way to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing while avoiding the pitfalls. This list of selected risks is aimed at giving a general overview of the items educational institutions should keep in mind when considering the use of cloud computing.
Security
There are many different types of security risks with data stored in the cloud. Information in the cloud can be vulnerable to hacking attacks, servers can fail and cause data to disappear, cloud service vendors can go out of business and stop providing service with little to no warning, to name just a few of the risks associated with cloud computing.
A 2008 survey of 244 IT professionals found that three-quarters felt that security was a significant concern when using cloud computing.[35]
These security fears are well founded, as examples of data disasters and service interruptions that have occurred to businesses and institutions using cloud computing show. A Microsoft server malfunction in October caused a massive loss of customer data for T-Mobile’s Sidekick phones, leading to customer dissatisfaction and lawsuits.[36] Google’s Gmail experienced an outage in September, leaving users of the popular service to wonder for a few hours if they would ever see their E-mail again.[37]
Institutions and businesses accustomed to having control over data housed on-site can be uneasy when confronted with the fact that data can now be housed in the cloud. The data moves from being housed on institution networks to a third party network. A certain amount of trust and careful contract negotiation is required with cloud computing vendors to ensure both parties are clear on what measures are being taken to provide security for the data.
However, some security fears may be unfounded. It’s possible that some vendors providing cloud computing services may have better security than the companies to which they are providing services. “There are tons of cloud breach stories,” Croll says. “One of the reasons for that is that when it happens in the cloud, the victim has someone to yell at. When it happens internally, it gets swept under the rug, so you don’t hear about it. Consider that the majority of computer crime is an inside job; cloud operators aren’t insiders.”
Privacy
Educational institutions face another hurdle in overcoming privacy concerns in cloud computing. Schools and universities are subject to regulations in the Family Education Rights Privacy Act (FERPA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and other laws that require strict control over certain student information to ensure it is kept private.
Cornell’s Tracy Mitrano describes some of the challenges Cornell has faced in remaining compliant with FERPA by saying that Cornell’s data “may be outsourced only to vendors that we have designated, and that are willing to accept designation, as ’school officials’ with ‘legitimate educational interests’ in the data.”[38]
Because the business world does not have to deal with many of the special privacy issues of FERPA and HIPAA, educational institutions can sometimes face difficulty in negotiating contracts that cover the additional burden of maintaining student privacy. Dealing with a vendor that specializes in providing cloud tools or services to educational environments may make it easier to come to an agreement that allows compliance with all the necessary laws.
American University has already faced challenges with student data privacy in its experience with the implementation of AU Abroad’s online enrollment system. Once the enrollment system was up and running, a security scan revealed that there were “numerous severe vulnerabilities” that exposed student data, according to David Swartz. AU worked with the vendor to fix the problem, but the temporary security hole serves as an example of how security flaws can cause privacy problems in a university environment.
Support and training needs
Institutions introducing new cloud-based programs may face challenges in training faculty, staff and students how to use new systems, particularly those who are not tech-savvy. For faculty especially, learning how to use new technology in the classroom can be a challenge. Some faculty may be resistant to the new technology, seeing it as an added burden to their schedule already busy with lesson planning, grading, coaching students, and research.
If an institution introduces new technology — whether it is through cloud computing or not — it should assess whether training needs to take place to ensure the technology is used and used to its greatest advantage.
The support required for this training can be a drain on IT staff resources and should be taken into consideration when deciding to deploy new technology.
“IT directors may have to contend with potential bumps in the road that have more to do with the organizations themselves rather than the technology,” according to Croll. “The downside is that a lot of IT people will have to learn new jobs. This is disruptive stuff. IT won’t be unemployed, but those guys are fossils and don’t want to change,” Croll said. “The smart IT folks I know love clouds, because they understand that they can build things that help the company. But the Luddites are afraid.”
Uncertainty about cost benefits
A brief scan of information on the Internet will tell you that one of the most alluring things about cloud computing is that it can be more cost efficient. Businesses can save money using applications on servers in the cloud by not having to invest in hardware and only paying for actual usage of data in the cloud. But cost savings in the cloud are not always easy to determine and can be an illusion.
The University of Indiana’s position paper on cloud computing lists cost/benefit profile uncertainty as a challenge, saying that “A significant proportion of institutions that have used cloud services indicate the cost/savings realized by using cloud services was estimated incorrectly, and that they have been unable to effectively monitor cost/savings, or have only been able to do so with great difficulty.”[39]
Alan Cattier, Director of Academic Technologies at Emory University, also believes that quantifying the savings of cloud computing can be complicated. He gave an example of Emory’s implementation of iTunes U, saying that it is not necessarily costing anything in terms of the cloud, but that the services Emory is providing around iTunes U do have a cost. “There is a cost because we have people who are authoring podcasts or are in the content distribution business within classes or outside of classes. So where does a cloud service actually begin or end?” said Cattier.
Campus culture and environment
One of the biggest benefits of cloud computing is the opportunity it offers to allow collaboration on a wider scale. Universities on opposite sides of the globe can work together on research in the cloud. However, some universities may face challenges in taking advantage of these online environments if staff is not accustomed to collaborating with people outside of their own group.
Universities that already have a collaborative culture may find it easier to adapt to using cloud-based tools to broaden their collaborative reach. But universities that do not have that culture may need to take the time and effort to foster it in the campus community before these collaborative tools can be used to their full advantage.
Integration into existing IT
IT departments can face challenges in integrating new cloud computing technologies into legacy IT structures.
One challenge, Swartz said, is keeping up with expectations for new solutions while maintaining many of the existing legacy solutions, with the same size staff and number of resources.
Moving to the cloud can also face resistance from IT staff, but some of their concerns may be misplaced. “IT departments are notorious for, properly so, being very cautious and conservative about the changes they make to systems they maintain, but we’ve kind of reached the point now where the cloud concept is pretty mundane,” Abell said. “It’s not an unusual step to take … if the infrastructure is there and you avail yourself of robust partners.”
Competitive Analysis
American University
Demographic Snapshot:
Status – Private, liberal arts institution in Washington, D.C.
Faculty – 591 full-time faculty with more than 90 percent holding the highest degree in their field.
Enrollment – 6,023 undergraduate; 3,297 graduate; 1,667 law; 1,199 non-degree
Average class size: 22 undergraduate; 16.9 graduate
Tuition (2009/2010): undergraduate $17,228 per semester; graduate $1,237 per credit hour
Current wireless network protocol: a/b/g
Age of wireless network: 10 years with upgrades
When campus will use N: 2 years till full implementation
Number of access points on campus: currently adding
Cloud based e-mail: yes
(Source: American University Fast Facts – http://www.american.edu/discoverau/fast-facts.cfm
Source: American University Tuition -http://www.american.edu/finance/studentaccounts/Tuition-and-Fees-Information.cfm
Source: David Swartz, American University Chief Information Officer)
Wireless:
American University has not yet begun rolling out a wireless N network. After about two years of preparation, initial tryouts, and bidding, the Tenley and Law School campuses will be the first to go N by the summer of 2010. A complete campus-wide upgrade will take between 18 months and two years, according to David Swartz.
After some testing of N on campus, American University has selected Aruba Networks as its provider of the next generation of wireless, according to Swartz. Already, schools like Cornell, McGill, and Carnegie Mellon have also selected Aruba to implement their transition to N over other large system providers such as Cisco. Swartz considers those schools good examples to follow when it comes to upgrading to N.
Cloud computing:
American University has seen a definite move in the direction of cloud computing over the last few years and plans to increase its use where it makes economic sense.
It all comes down to dollars and cents for Swartz. He used Blackboard as an example of when to decide to take applications to the cloud. American University currently does not use the cloud-based version of Blackboard because it’s still less expensive to host it on the AU network. But Swartz keeps an eye on the costs and believes that “at some point in time that price point will change. Right now it’s still cheaper for me to do it. But that price will come down, and at some point I’m probably going to say, ‘You guys do it.’”
American University has launched a number of cloud-based technologies over the last few years. Students were moved to cloud-based Google apps, which include Google mail, in the summer of 2008. The university has also implemented a cloud-based faculty activity reporting system, a virtual campus tour from RealVideo, an enrollment system for AU Abroad, and new graduate school admission and enrollment system, Swartz said.
Cloud computing has also been used to further educational and collaborative goals at American University. Online training library Lynda.com was deployed campus-wide in the fall of 2009, available to all AU faculty, staff and students. In addition, the university has launched Wimba, an application designed to enhance collaborative learning on the Web.
In the future, American University is planning to keep an eye on developments in cloud-based applications and adopting them when it makes fiscal sense. Some of the cloud-based applications Swartz is particularly interested in implementing are blogging tools, Gmail and Google apps or Lotus Notes in the cloud for faculty, and cloud-based apps for the new Sharepoint portal, such as document processing, online work flow, and imaging.
George Washington University
Demographic Snapshot:
Status – Private, liberal arts institution in Washington, D.C.
Faculty – 1,576 full-time faculty
Enrollment – 10,000 undergraduate; 14,000 graduate; 1,000 non-degree
Average class size: 28 undergraduate
Tuition (2009/2010): undergraduate $41,610; graduate $1,118.00 per credit hour
Current wireless network: b/g
Age of current network: 2 years
When campus will use 11n: currently deploying 11n
Number of access points: more than 2,500 but only 50 11n WAP’s so far
Cloud based e-mail: yes
(Source: http://www.gwu.edu/explore/aboutgw/facts
source: David Steinour, George Washington University Chief Information Officer)
Wireless:
GWU has started to rollout its wireless N network. IT officials at GWU expect to fully implement N over the next two years. The school has 50 N access points and will be switching out its other 2,500 b/g access points as the hardware is upgraded or finishes out its life cycle.
David Steinour, George Washington University’s chief information officer, said it’s important for the school to “develop and deliver the fastest network possible as soon as possible. Even though I do not consider wireless a replacement for the wired [network] I see it more as an enhancement, we do have to keep it as up to date as possible since the student would rather forego performance for convenience.”
Steinour attributes the growth in video streaming as the greatest demand for increased bandwidth on campus.
Cloud computing:
George Washington University currently uses Google for its student and alumni e-mail. “Outsourcing student and alumni email has worked out very well because it offers better service with larger quotas and the outsourcing provides a significant cost savings,” Steinor said.
The university also uses a cloud-based course management system that provides “an online forum for professors and students to conduct classroom activities, post course work, and share information online,” Steinor said.
To handle security a privacy concerns surrounding cloud computing, GWU has a university compliance committee. “Security measures are reviewed as part of the implementation of new projects to ensure that the University is in compliance with applicable regulations and the controls described in University policy,” Steinour said.
The university performs a return on investment analysis on a project by project basis to ensure its cloud computing applications are cost effective, according to Steinor.
Emory University
Demographic Snapshot:
Status – Private, research university in Atlanta, Ga.
Faculty and staff – 3,124 full-time faculty
Enrollment – 6,980 undergraduate; 5,950 graduate and professional
Average class size: 18
Tuition (2009/2010): undergraduate $37,500; graduate $32,800
Current wireless network: b/g now deploying N
Age of wireless network: more than 4 years
When will campus be all N: within a year
Number of access points: 3,000
Cloud based e-mail: no
(Source:http://www.emory.edu/home/about/factsfigures/index.html
Source: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/atlanta-ga/emory-university-1564
Source: Alan Cattier, Emory University Director of Academic Technologies)
Wireless:
Alan Cattier, the director of academic technologies at Emory, explained that the university is just beginning to replace all the school’s 3,000 access points from b/g to N. Emory is using Aruba systems for the upgrade.
Cattier expects the move to N will actually save the university money in the long run.
“We anticipate that it will be cheaper as a system than our b/g implementation,” he revealed. “So, we are cutting rates at the same time we’re introducing n. And the access points that actually deliver the wireless signal may be more expensive, but the routers and controllers that manage the entire system are significantly more powerful and significantly more comprehensive in coverage than earlier generations. That’s where we’re anticipating a lot of the cost savings.”
Emory’s efforts to expand its wireless bandwidth capabilities coincide with the growing demand from students for more videos through Hulu and other online outlets. “We’re hoping that with N there’s enough bandwidth to do just about anything,” explained Cattier. “And our early test seems very promising on N.”
Cloud computing:
Emory has taken a cautious approach to cloud computing. Although Emory has been evaluating cloud computing for a while, they have used it only to a limited extent at this point, said Cattier.
One of the areas in which Emory has taken the plunge into cloud computing is with its help desk software. Emory is moving toward a software as a service (SaaS) for its help desk “that will be used for problem ticketing and incident management across the university,” according to Cattier.
Emory has also found ways to use cloud computing as a means to facilitate teaching and learning. Emory has eight workstations on campus that offer training through Lynda.com, an online library of software training courses and has deployed a cloud-based version of iTunes U.
In the future, Emory is considering bringing some cloud-based social community tools to campus, Cattier said. Cattier is interested in online tools designed to bring community to the student body. “I think those tools are on the rise and will be one of the ones we consider,” Cattier said.
Emory is also evaluating whether to move to a cloud based e-mail system and is considering Microsoft Live for its e-mail, conferencing, and collaboration environment. But Cattier believes that cloud-based e-mail is low on the priority list for Emory. “There are just too many questions around HIPAA at Emory to really say that there’s a great comfort level with the way we could move forward with a Google or Microsoft (cloud-based e-mail system),” Cattier said.
Boston University
Demographic Snapshot:
Status – Private university in Boston, Mass.
Faculty – 2,622
Enrollment – 18,534 undergraduate, 13,232 graduate and doctoral
Faculty – 2,622
Average class size: 27
Current wireless network protocol: b/g/n
Age of current network: approx 1 year on N
Number of access points: 1,200
Cloud based e-mail: no
(Source: http://www.bu.edu/admissions/bu-basics/fast-facts/
Source: Tracy Schroeder, B.U. Vice President, Information Systems & Technology)
Wireless:
Boston University has already partially implemented N, but only combining it with its already-installed wireless g/b protocols. Also, IT leaders at the school admit that the N coverage is inadequate.
“It’s not big enough. The technology is changing, and changing very rapidly. It’s on a very large urban campus. It’s difficult,” said Tracy Schroeder, vice president of information systems and technology at Boston University. “There aren’t any economies of scale for deploying over a large area, so it’s costly.” She said they’re anticipating a large number of students to arrive on campus with the new iPad in the fall.
“We’re thinking about how can we re-prioritize our investments in wireless leading up to fall to try to avoid a train wreck with students arriving with expectations of wireless blankets in all the dorms,” continued Schroeder. “Not that we’ve said we were going to deliver that and not that they even know that they’re going to want it. They’ve known that they want wireless in the dorms, that’s very clear in the satisfaction surveys. But they don’t know that they’re going to require it or they won’t be able to use their computing device.”
Cloud computing:
Use of cloud computing at Boston University is limited but is expected to increase in the next few years.
The university is using cloud-based service CollegeNet, an SaaS provider for a variety of higher-education related application services, for application processing in three or four of their schools and colleges, according to Schroeder.
Boston University is in the planning stages for a video repository project called BU Tube that leverages the video sharing Web site YouTube. The group developing the project “went several rounds before we got consensus that no, it does not make sense for us to build a YouTube site. It makes sense for us to build a site that leverages YouTube, that incorporates our content and puts a wrapper around it that we can control,” Schroeder said.
As far as the cloud being used as an educational tool for students and faculty, Boston University may have some areas using cloud-based educational tools on a small scale, but “there has not been an institutional targeted investment or strategic initiative with regard to one of those services in the learning space,” according to Schroeder.
What does the future hold for cloud computing at Boston University? The university is looking to move to a cloud-based e-mail system within approximately the next six months, Schroeder said. Schroeder believes that moving to a cloud-based e-mail system has fewer privacy and security risks because e-mail is not typically a secure environment unless purposely encrypted with an additional set of tools. “E-mail is not meant for sensitive information, should not be used for sensitive information. It’s not secure today and it won’t be secure whether it’s hosted by Google or hosted by us. … So I think that’s one of the reasons why e-mail is a leading candidate for using a cloud service because arguably at least the security issues are fewer. They’re not non-existent because there are e-discovery issues and appropriate-use type issues. But they are certainly lesser than, say, using a cloud service for a learning system that is going to store grades,” Schroeder said.
The university is also keeping an eye on “the future role of cloud computing related to server virtualization and hosting, as well as storage and high-performance computing over the longer term,” Schroeder said.
Georgetown University:
Demographic Snapshot:
Status – private Catholic, liberal arts international research university in Washington, D.C.
Faculty – 1,268 full-time faculty; 689 part-time
Enrollment – 7,092 undergraduate; 5,330 graduate; 2,083 law; 813 medical school
Student to Faculty Ratio – 11:1
Tuition (2009/2010): undergraduate $38,616; graduate $36,744
Current wireless network protocol: a/b/g/n
When campus will be all N: unsure, but hoping by July of 2011
Number of access points: around 500 will likely double to 1,000 with upgrade
Cloud based e-mail: yes
(Source: Georgetown University At a Glance – http://explore.georgetown.edu/documents/?DocumentID=742;
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/94/opinions_college08_Georgetown-University_94158.html
Source: Charles Leonhardt, Principal Technologist for the Office of Information Services at Georgetown University)
Wireless:
IT experts at Georgetown University admit that their school is “deficient” when it comes to wireless coverage and infrastructure. Though the school has implemented wireless N in key places, such as the school’s library, there are no plans yet for a full N rollout on campus.
“It’s location specific. Our wireless posture is not nearly what it should be,” according to Charles Leonhardt, the principal technologist in the Office of Information Services at GU. “We have wireless coverage in most common spaces such as the library and student center. Most, but not all of the classrooms. And most, but not all of the dormitories. A real frustration for most people… is that wireless is not ubiquitous and furthermore, wireless is not on a common platform.”
Leonhardt points out that upgrading a wireless network is expensive and times are tough at his school and most other schools across the country. Still, the upgrade is now a priority at Georgetown.
“It’s a very important institutional priority to fund a major upgrade to the wireless infrastructure campus wide and more importantly fund a major upgrade to the campus network that lies underneath the wireless network,” Leonhardt explained.
“I think one of the problems with upgrading the wireless network is that a lot of the infrastructure sitting the buildings themselves is less than satisfactory. One of the reasons we haven’t put in wireless ubiquitously is we know the infrastructure can’t handle it.”
Leonhardt is confident that the university will allocate the approximately $9 million cost to upgrade the school’s network. A budget decision is expected this coming July and full implementation, Leonhardt expects, will.
Cloud computing
Georgetown University has found a number of ways to use cloud-based applications on campus for students, faculty and staff.
The university moved to Google for student e-mail in 2009 but has not moved faculty and staff e-mail yet, according to Leonhardt. Several grad schools at Georgetown have a cloud-based admissions process, which feeds into the student system to process financial aid.
Georgetown is using iTunes U for broadcast events or certain lectures to the world outside of campus. However, the faculty is not currently using it as a method of distributing information or lessons to students, Leonhardt said. Also in use at the university is Elluminate Live, which is an online tool that allows people to collaborate through audio and posting documents or PowerPoint presentations to share. Elluminate is fully integrated with Blackboard.
There is limited deployment of cloud-based online training services at Georgetown. There may be some individual departments using online training tools, but there is no campus-wide effort in that area, according to Leonhardt.
One of the more innovative uses of cloud computing at Georgetown is the creation of a cloud-based online community for alumni. Alumni can post online class notes, news and jobs for students still attending Georgetown. “The alumni can express online either what their fields of expertise are or what companies they work for and whether they’re interested in providing internships or work opportunities,” Leonhardt said. Students can then log in and search for alumni in particular locations or fields and contact them directly. The interaction between classes facilitated by these job postings is a way that Georgetown creates community beyond the walls of the campus and between classes of different years.
Georgetown is considering a move to a cloud-based HR, payroll, and benefits system in the near future. But other than that, they have no plans at this time for expanding their cloud-based systems, Leonhardt said.
Overall wireless summary of competitive analysis:
American University is in last place when it comes to the initial rollout of wireless N when compared to the other schools. Despite some testing at AU, no formal installation of N has begun. All of the other schools have started implementing the N protocol, even if on a very small scale. Ultimately, though, AU could wind up completing its upgrade around the same time as many of the other schools. AU’s N upgrade is expected to be completed in up to two years from now George Washington University, for example, also does not expect to finish its N upgrade for up to two years from now. So, even though other schools have gotten a jump-start on the transition to N, AU and other schools may end up finishing its N within just months of each other.
It is most obviously a competitive threat and weakness that other schools might complete their wireless N installations and promote that fact well before American University. If that is the case, prospective students with heavy bandwidth demanding devices such as the iPad could be swayed to pursue other schools. This presents AU with an opportunity to speed up its implementation of N and become more competitive.
However, the fact that American University has a long-term N plan in place is actually a strength against some other schools. Campuses such as Syracuse, Georgetown, and Boston University, which have already begun installing wireless access points, still seem very unsure about when their rollouts will be complete. Also, American’s decision to hold off on beginning its installation of N until the best security methods are decided on could be seen as both a weakness and a strength. Although the testing and research of security methods on N has obviously slowed the school’s implementation of a new network, it could also be perceived as a strength by students who want to make sure best practices are in place to protect their data.
Overall cloud computing summary of competitive analysis:
From the data obtained from the surveyed schools, American University appears to be at least matching other universities, if not doing better, in the move to cloud computing.
Other schools (Boston, Emory) are getting a slower start because of either the size of the student body or a general wariness of the cloud computing environment and concerns over privacy and security.
American University is doing a particularly good job at looking for ways to leverage cloud computing as a learning and teaching tool, as evidenced by its campus-wide implementation of Lynda.com and Wimba. Using cloud computing applications to facilitate teaching and learning is an area that will probably increase dramatically as it offers educational institutions new ways to collaborate both within the university environment and externally with other universities around the world. The use of cloud-based collaboration areas, such as IBM’s Cloud Academy, can facilitate research, broaden the horizons of students and faculty, and serve to promote American University to a broader audience.
Some universities surveyed are successfully using cloud computing as a means for social networking and establishing community outside the walls of the campus. Boston University’s creation of BU Tube and Georgetown’s deployment of its online alumni community are great examples of social networking in the cloud. Online communities like those at Boston University and Georgetown can lead to a greater sense of campus community and student loyalty — and perhaps a greater amount of loyal alumni donations in the future.
Recommendations
Below are recommendations that will help American University improve its use of wireless and cloud computing technology.
There are both immediate and long term actions American University can take to improve its state of wireless connectivity and cloud computing. Although the school is making significant strides in rolling out its new 11n network within two years, more effort should be made to make that transition sooner. An explosion of “bandwidth hog” devices such as the Apple iPad could put serious strains on the school’s current a/b/g network. An upgrade completion date of no later than September of 2011 would make the school more prepared for any unanticipated spikes in bandwidth demand. To begin an N rollout, the school must first decide on the best security methods to protect data on the upgraded network. While this is important, a decision must be made as quickly as possible so that a full roll out might be implemented sooner.
Also, as part of the university’s efforts to remain competitive and attract the best and brightest students, being “middle of the pack” in terms of wireless networking capabilities simply isn’t good enough. In order to move to the front of the pack for the next upgrade after N, whatever that may be, it would be in the university’s best interests to organize a committee focused solely on wireless networking on campus. That committee should meet quarterly to discuss and recommend any changes to the current state of wireless and work towards early adoption of the next breakthroughs in wireless technology.
The university staff and officials should not lose site of the fact that cloud computing has a lot of potential as a learning/teaching/collaboration tool. — make a distinction between cloud computing for “technology” (like e-mail systems), and cloud computing that facilitates learning and collaboration. Recommend that American keep an eye out for what is happening with cloud computing that is aimed at facilitating collaboration (like IBM Cloud Academy). It could be a great opportunity to pool academic resources and work with people in other institutions or even within the same institution.
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Additional Resources