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Education IT
Cloud helps universities cut costs by 74%
Queensland University of Technology in Australia leveraged cloud computing to provide enterprise software to more than 140 universities in Asia Pacific. Glenn Stewart, Professor of Information Systems revealed how the university dramatically reduced costs while it enjoyed greater assurance and scaleability.
Stewart heads the SAP University Competence Centre (UCC) which provides, on a non-profit basis, an SAP suite of business software to over 800 academics and 42,000 students from 140 universities in Asia Pacific and Japan.
If an individual university was to run the software without the help of the UCC, it needs to invest in hardware, as well as recruit and train specialised staff. “Servers and backup facilities could easily bring the start up cost to A$200,000 (US$173,000). Replacement and recurring staff cost would be another A$150,000 (US$130,000) per year,” said Stewart. This would be a major obstacle for any university looking to use the enterprise software to support teaching.
The introduction of the UCC in 2000 allowed universities to pay A$30,000 (US$26,000) for the use of software on five clients, and now, by migrating the services into a private cloud, each university pays A$7800 (US$6760) for that same package, which is more than 74 per cent reduction in cost.
“Virtualisation and cloud computing has enabled QUT to host the needs of many universities. Individual institutions do not need to buy hardware, hire and train people, and manage all that. There has been significant cost savings for all institutions involved,” observed Dr Robert LoBue, Vice President, Global University Alliances, SAP.
QUT started to move its services into the private cloud last October (2009). Today, it has finalised 80 per cent of its migration, and expects to complete 95 per cent by the end of this year.
The decision to use cloud technology was straight-forward, said Stewart. “In 2005, we started to deliver our services using virtualisation. We would have needed over A$1million (US$866,900) of hardware, but that helped cut it down by half. Still, it did not provide the scaleability we desired. Cloud computing halted our capital expenditure and moved that into operational expenditure. We are now able to provide services on demand, and provide the lowest cost of service to the universities we serve.”
The key benefit of putting services on to the cloud is the ability to scale, according to LoBue. “At the end of 2008, there were 44 universities in the programme. Slightly over a year later, we have extended services to 140 education institutions,” he added.
The flexibility of the cloud also allows for the change in usage intensity. “When a university first joins the programme, they might use the basic Enterprise Resource Planning course. As universities see how the software engages and motivates students in class, many increase the number of courses, some up to 30 different products,” said LoBue.
QUT now enjoys more assured recovery strategy and cheaper back up facilities, concluded Stewart. “The cloud takes away the need to spend on a complex and expensive back up system. It gives us more secure forms of recovery.” He cited a recent failure in the system and how the restoration took just two hours as an example.
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3 Comments
On 21 July 2010 Andrew wrote:
I always find it funny when I read about universities outsourcing their technology, because I maintain a list of academic institutions that do this.
If I'm hiring staff to fill technology positions in my company, why would I hire someone trained by an academic institution that patently can't manage it's own technology?
It cuts costs, and administration blah, blah,something about licensing, yaketty yak, more nonsense about not enough local talent, blah, blah… If your institution can not manage its own infrastructure then how can I expect your students to be able to manage 'any' infrastructure. Maybe I'll send them to play in a sand pit with buckets and spades where they can do no harm.
In the meantime how about training students up in an environment that's managed by your institution so that they can get the experience and more critically, the skills required to perform the tasks I damn well need.
On 26 July 2010 Kassim Surai wrote:
In reference to the post (21 July 2010 Andrew wrote) you would have thought that Uni students gaining insights on how to reduce infrastracuture and enterprise software cost of ownership would be of more interest to an employer than an outmoded model of expensive on site software & infrastucture. Andrew clearly doesn't understand the Cloud/SaaS model
On 31 July 2010 Wan wrote:
Wow.. i am happy to hear the uni that i am studying QUT saves lots and lots of $$$. But why there is still some problems in QUT especially with their Cloud Computing problem. It seems this often occurs at the begining of every semester. Perhaps the Cloud ain't ready to handle multi-processing with thousands of social communities? Mmmm….