CLOUDAPRISE EFFORTS EQUAL CAPITAL SAVINGS

In 2014, University of Arizona adopted its Cloud First Strategy, which prioritizes the use of cloud services or cloud hosting rather than on-site servers for enterprise services. Since then, UITS has been divesting from computer equipment purchases in favor of cloud services.

The migration of existing on-site enterprise services, celebrated as Cloudaprise, reached a major milestone in FY18 when all enterprise application migrations were completed. 30 systems were migrated in FY18, including UAccess Financials, UAccess Employee, UAccess Student, UAccess Analytics, faculty/staff email, and the university integration and access management tools.

Since Cloudaprise began, UA has experienced substantial reduction in annual refresh spending on computer equipment. UITS has realized other benefits from this shift as well, including enhanced security and agility/ speed of deployment. Some of the hidden savings include reduction in power and other equipment categories like AC, backup generators, and batteries, which are not accounted for in the $3 million per year savings.

CLOUD LEADERSHIP AWARD

In November 2017, UA was recognized for its efforts in moving enterprise systems to the cloud with an overall win in the inaugural Cloud Leadership Awards, shared with University of Notre Dame. The UA was also recognized as a winner in the Backup/ Disaster Recovery category. The awards were presented by E&I Cooperative Services at the 2017 EDUCAUSE Annual conference.

OUR CLOUD JOURNEY

• 2013
  • Developed Cloud First Business Case
• 2014

  • Posted Commodity Infrastructure as a Service RFP

  • Kicked Off Cloud Initiative

• 2015

  • Trained Staff

  • Set Up Development and Test Environments

  • Launched first enterprise system UAccess Research (Kuali Coeus) in AWS

• 2016

  • Continued planning and testing of cloud environments

  • Migrated smaller systems as part of ramp up process

• 2017

  • Accelerated pace of enterprise migrations

  • University of Arizona receives national Cloud Leadership Award

• 2018

  • Completed migration of major enterprise systems to AWS

MIGRATION MIILESTONES

These critical systems now enjoy the benefits of cloud for capital savings and enhanced information security:

UACCESS ANALYTICS

UACCESS EMPLOYEE

UACCESS STUDENT

UACCESS FINANCIALS: Kuali financial system

KUALI TOOLS: application development tools

UACBT: Computer Based Training system

LABVIEW: student lab software application

SUNAPSIS: international student information management

DISCOURSE: collaboration software

EDS: Employee Directory Services

WEBAUTH: authentication tool

NETID: authentication tool

GROUPER: group information management system

EPM DATA WAREHOUSE: for Business Intelligence data

IBM ELT DATA STORAGE: for Business Intelligence data

UTILITY SERVER

JIRA: work request tracking

CONFLUENCE: wiki tool

UACONNECT: faculty/staff email