Bruce Maas talks about the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Cloud Computing
In our latest podcast I talk with Bruce Maas, CIO at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. We discuss UWM’s continuing work to apply Cloud Computing ideas to campus infrastructure, including the recent roll-out of Zimbra email and calendaring to 50,000 accounts and evolving plans to virtualise much of the campus IT experience.
During the conversation, we refer to the following resources;
- Eucalyptus
- IIBA
- Peoplesoft
- VMWare
- Wall Street Journal piece on UWM
- Xythos
- Zimbra
This conversation was conducted on Tuesday 3 March 2009.
For other podcasts in the Xiphos series of Education podcasts see here. To subscribe to updates from all of Talis’ podcast series, see here.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:04 am
[...] I spoke with Bruce Maas last night, and released the result as a podcast today. [...]
March 13th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
No where in the podcast or article did I come across any “costs/savings/comparison” numbers? And since it seems to be a ‘Private cloud’ contained on campus..assume all the storage/server costs for the student email/calendar/etc system is borne by the University??? What storage quota does the student have? & at what cost?
In a previous article(see below) it seems the ZIMBRA costs $500,000 …assume this is a software license fee per year??? for 50,000 accounts.
In an article of 12/2007 Bruce Maas stated:
http://wistechnology.com/articles/4314/
“Given the technology savvy nature of today’s student populations, no public university could live for long without examples of social networks. UWM has set the stage for enhanced adoption of Web 2.0 by replacing what Maas called an antiquated e-mail system. The university, through an RFP process, has selected an economical – $10 per user – Zimbra e-mail calendaring and messaging tool to serve its 50,000 plus mailboxes.”
At first glance it seems very pricey compared to offerings from GOOGLE/apps gmail or MS LIVE…both offering 7 ->10 GB of storage per user FREE.
Comments?
March 13th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Had wrong email in previous post
March 28th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
JIm:
You pose good questions.
First, given this is onsite, our total costs per user per year to operate (equipment, staffing) are under $10 per account per year. Outsourcing students to gmail, Zimbra, or Microsoft was not an option because it did not meet our base requirement of having all faculty, staff, and students in one integrated system. This was driven by an institutional requirement, which was intended to create one virtual community. So far, this is working effectively. Compare that price per mailbox to what Gartner says is the average in business, and we are a fraction of the cost.
We give out 1-5 gig accounts to students automatically, and 5-10 gig to faculty/staff. We came from an unlimited practice, and so far there are no issues. Our feeling is that we want minimal barriers to the use cases of our customers. We do not charge back.
If at some time in the future our requirements change, we will look at other options. We believe requirements, which can include cost as a factor, drive decisions, and not cost alone. Anyone who wants to contact me can do so at bmaas@uwm.edu. We are very transparent in our decision making. Regards, Bruce Maas.