Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

The September 18th NET+ AWS Tech Share dug into issues that keep the research and education cloud professionals up at night: measuring cloud maturity, justifying costs, and simplifying storage decisions. Here's what you need to know:

Cloud Elevation Index (CEI): Penn State's Approach to Benchmarking Cloud Journey

In the meeting, we briefly talked about Penn State University’s innovative internal project: the Cloud Elevation Index (CEI). For those of you that missed their presentation this year at Cloud Forum here are the slides and recording. In a nutshell, this new metric could potentially offer research and education institutions a standardized way to quantify cloud maturity progress.

Stay tuned for updates regarding Penn State's CEI. NET+ subscribers will see CEI for their own accounts in the upcoming release of the Data Benchmarking project. Internet2 is working with Penn State to set up a working group open to the broader research and education community on this initiative.

Cloud Costs Under Scrutiny: CMA Investigation Sparks Debate

Joshua (University of Virginia) shared a recent article about AWS’s responses in the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) investigation into anticompetitive behavior by the public cloud providers and the other major cloud providers, igniting a lively discussion:

  • Bob mentioned that The Register has a history of posting anti-public-cloud articles. He also cautioned against viewing the cloud as a universal solution.
  • Kelly (University of Washington-Madison) highlighted often-overlooked cloud benefits, particularly in security.
  • The group explored differences in compliance and security between cloud and on-prem:
    • Cloud platforms handle some compliance aspects at the platform level.
    • On-prem setups vary widely in control and security ("All bets are off for researchers who have a server under their desk").

Key takeaways:

  1. Evaluate cloud benefits holistically, beyond just infrastructure costs.
  2. Consider how the cloud simplifies certain compliance requirements.
  3. Recognize the challenges in making direct cloud vs. on-prem comparisons.
  4. A more balanced analysis, including links to the hearings with each of the three public cloud vendors in the CMA investigation, can be found at How Big Cloud defended itself in the U.K. 

Taming the Wild West of Cloud Procurement

Familiar procurement headaches shared across institutions:

  • Challenge: Corralling departments and researchers under a single contract. Many are either unaware of university contracts or are unwilling to comply with or have their accounts controlled by central IT management.
  • Risk: If controls are too tight or if the value of joining the institutional contract and org are not made clear and compelling, there is a chance that departments and researchers (primarily researchers) will create accounts with non-university credentials, pushing IP and any chance of university support, to personal accounts.

Best practices mentioned: Consider increasing closer collaboration between IT, Procurement, Research to develop streamlined cloud account creation processes that make the value proposition clear and balance flexibility with control.

AWS Storage Simplification

Jan from AWS has an internal project she’s working on to simplify AWS storage selection:

  • Challenge: Researchers and others struggle to choose optimal AWS storage configurations for their use cases.
  • Initiative: Developing user-friendly tools for accurate object storage pricing estimates.
  • Goal: Enable precise cost estimation without requiring deep architectural expertise.

This initiative aligns with recent discussions in the research and education community about research data storage challenges. In fact, this past June, Oren Sreenby of Internet2 wrote an insightful blog on "Top Issues Around Research Data Storage in Higher Ed."

Jan is actively seeking insights from those working with the cloud within the research and education community to create a potential solution. This is your chance to shape tools that could make your storage decisions easier and more cost-effective! Contact Jan at janday[at]amazon[dot]com. 

Conclusion

From Penn State's Cloud Elevation Index to the ongoing debates about cloud costs and procurement strategies, it's clear that our community is still wrestling with challenges to making the most efficient use of cloud in their institutions. As we navigate these complexities, the collaborative spirit of the NET+ AWS Tech Share community remains a valuable resource. We hope you’ll join us at the next NET+ AWS Tech Share and add your voice to the conversation!

Be sure to check out the other blog posts we've written. As always, feel free to send any feedback to tmanik[at]internet2[dot]edu.