The NET+ program and Internet2’s overall cloud programs are evolving from efforts to support cloud access to cloud optimization and scaling. Internet2’s efforts to support the R&E community’s use of essential cloud services focus on four key areas:
- Facilitating access to commercial cloud services (NET+)
- Training and workforce development (Cloud Learning and Skills Sessions (CLASS))
- Cloud service insights (Cloud Scorecard, Institutional Profiles)
- Vendor management at community scale (NET+)
Over the past several years, Internet2 has made meaningful investments in the first two areas and jumpstarted internal and community efforts in the third and fourth areas. Understandably, all four of these areas are interrelated and are key to supporting efforts to improve and scale the use of essential cloud services.
Internet2 will continue to work with the community to invest in a NET+ portfolio of services, with a focus on services that represent emerging technical needs for the community (e.g., cloud storage migration services, governance, risk and compliance (GRC) services, or services where there is a challenge with a market incumbent that necessitates the community coming together to engage in collective negotiation (e.g., Google Workspace). Current emerging areas include cybersecurity services, vendor risk management/GRC services, and data migration services. In these emerging areas, Internet2 would be best served by leveraging competitive procurement processes to identify potential NET+ service providers to support the future adoption of the services by the most institutions in the R&E community as possible.
Because many, if not most, R&E consortial organizations are engaging in the facilitation or brokerage of cloud services, Internet2 should continue to focus on the areas where it is uniquely situated to provide value-add while other community organizations can support access to commodity services.
Cloud technologies continue to change and advance at a rapid pace. For example, AWS released a total of 119 new services and features in 2022. Keeping up with the latest technical advancements is difficult for information technology staff. This problem is compounded by the significant turnover at R&E institutions of staff who are experienced and skilled in cloud infrastructure and architecture as a result of the “great resignation.”
The Internet2 CLASS program was originally designed to address the gap in training that existed for researchers and research computing and data (RCD) professionals. The CLASS program continues to serve this purpose by providing custom training for the research community and has expanded to support the training needs of enterprise IT as well. This primarily has consisted of cohort-based training programs designed around certification programs for some of the leading Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers. These training courses remain popular. For example, the AWS Solution Architect Associate training has maintained a waitlist since it was originally offered in early 2022 and is currently in its fifth cohort. Many of these enterprise-focused trainings are already provided for free by the cloud service providers themselves. The CLASS programs provide value add by convening an R&E cohort with an instructor/mentor from the community. This builds a sense of community during and after the training. A major challenge in moving cloud training forward is the need for two very different business models, one for serving research needs and one for serving enterprise needs.
The CLASS program funding model today is dependent on per-course payments to Internet2 and in-kind contributions from the cloud service providers and/or their channel partners. Further work should be done to validate the long-term sustainability of this model or explore other models to meet the ongoing needs of the community in this area.
Both the Cloud Scorecard and Institutional Profiles efforts within the Internet2 NET+ program center around how we collect and expose data about cloud services compliance with standards and usage to participating institutions to use as insights to make better-informed decisions. Development of these platforms are essential to move community sharing from email lists and conversations into actionable insights. This becomes more essential as higher education leadership changes and we seek to be more inclusive as a community. Further, Internet2 collects data related to NET+ services that can be made available to subscribers to support individual organizations and broader community efforts.
The Cloud Scorecard Directory is currently a pilot project to provide a way for R&E institutions to review a completed Cloud Scorecard. Internet2 is currently engaged in an effort to identify a platform for the Cloud Scorecard to serve as a permanent home as the effort moves beyond the pilot phase. The long-term goal is to create a cloud service discovery platform that allows R&E institutions to quickly access vendors’ support for technology and compliance standards while supporting the discovery of services that meet those requirements.
The Institutional Profiles collect and share usage information like software release version, add-on services, integrations, service administration name and contact information, and other data about services. These opt-in profiles are available in pilots of NET+ Canvas and NET+ ServiceNow today. A different version of service benchmarking is in place today for NET+ IaaS services, AWS and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), to provide institutions insights into service usage and other information based on usage data Internet2 receives from the service providers’ channel partners. Both of these efforts have been well received and are areas of investment in future years.
Vendor management has already been at the core of the NET+ program and is essential to the management of commercial cloud services. As more organizations in the R&E community rely upon commercial cloud services for key technology solutions, a focus on vendor management will be even more essential. Vendor management is critical to sustaining cost-effective IT operations with the growth in venture-backed, privately held corporations focused on growth and publicly traded corporations focused on profitability.
Vendor management of cloud services has already been identified through the work of the NET+ Business, Procurement and Legal Advisory Committee (BPLAC) as a priority area for the Internet2 NET+ and an area for increased engagement across the R&E community. As part of efforts in this area, there is currently a vendor management working group developing best practices for the community as well as identifying ways to integrate the best practices into the NET+ program to support national scale vendor management efforts.
Status: All directions and initiatives are in motion. Ongoing advice and tracking happening with the NET+ Program Advisory Group (PAG), Cloud Services, Technology, and Architecture Advisory Committee (CSTAAS), and Business, Procurement and Legal Advisory Committee (BPLAC).