Community Exchange 2025 Cloud Track

[Bob Flynn <>]

Colleagues,

 

I hope you all had a great first day of CommEX25. In case you are tracking multiple tracks, here’s an update on the Cloud track!

Day One Recap

It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces today, meeting many of you IRL for the first time. And, as always, a thrill to meet many new community members.Thank you for being here and thank you for those who made it to Cloud track sessions today.

 

I have to say, I wasn’t the only one who found the schedule a little mysterious this morning, but I was grateful for the extra hour it gave me to complete my slides, so, um, thanks?

 

There was no mystery to the value of the Cloud track, though. We had two great panels and also..., well, let’s just get right into it, shall we?

 

As mentioned in the previous newsletter, the first two sessions in the Cloud track were panels with impactful topics. They did not disappoint. It is a shame they were not recorded. The discussions were substantive, thoughtful, and actionable.

• The Cloud track opened with The Role of Cloud in Your Data Center Strategy. With a panel comprised of a CIO (Matt Gunkel, UC Riverside), a CTO (Kari Robertson, UCOP), and a CISO (Tom Dugas, Duquesne), I was ready for a real diversity of perspectives. Moderator Kivanc Oner (CIO, UNLV) led the panel through a wide-ranging discussion that ranged from the practical to the (campus) political. While there was a range of experiences and approaches, there was general consensus on the big issues. Cost was not a prominent driver. The panelists agreed that requirements to provide a consistent, reliable service, and big-picture strategic considerations (space, skills, long-term planning) were most important. 
• After the keynote, we held our second panel, Strategies for Dealing with Changes to VMWare Licensing. The TL;DR here is they are all leaving. But hey, there is nuance. Our panelists, Henry Jenkins (UC Irvine), Phil Fenstermacher (William & Mary), and Kari Robertson (UCOP) [Yep, Kari again. Hey, she’s nice, OK?] represented different phases of the migration-off-VMWare story. UCI is in the planning phase, W&M is in the middle of their move. UCOP has completely migrated to the cloud. I2’s Sean O’Brien got the panel to lead us through their thinking, their processes, their lessons learned, and their results. When asked about whether the cloud was cheaper than their VMWare costs, the panel’s discussion was summed up well by Henry. He described a number of significant benefits, include cost savings from facilities, licensing, system retirements, etc., which will save the institution much more than the cost of the workloads they’re moving. 
• The final session of the day was my own Collaborative Cloud Innovation: Harnessing the Power of Community-Driven Solutions in Higher Education. It would be a bit awkward for me to review it, right?  Many people say it was amazing, and probably should have been the recorded session for that timeslot, but I would never say that myself. The headline is that Internet2 has this cool new program called the Cloud Infrastructure Community Program that brings the community together to lift each other up through cloud collaboration and learning. If that kind of thing interests you, join me for lunch on Thursday, and we can talk about it. It’s on the schedule. 

Day Two Highlights

We have a full day on Wednesday in the Cloud track. In an effort to keep the blood flowing and reduce frostbite, we thought it’d be fun to make you move between every session. Just kidding! It was not intentional, but we do move all day. (Don’t get me in trouble with the events team! They work amazingly hard to pull this event off and these things happen.)

 

The throughline for the day is research. Consult the full program in your mobile app. I’ll just take a moment to mention the ones I’m most looking forward to:

• The day starts with Update from the NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure on Priorities Including the NAIRR Pilot. When the NAIRR Pilot was first announced, I’ll confess I found the scope a bit narrow. Since then, I’ve watched it develop and I'm eager to hear where things stand now. Katie Antypas from NSF is a great advocate for the program, and I enjoy hearing her speak about it. NOTE: This is in California D on the 2nd floor. I believe this is where the keynote was.
• Following that talk, hurry upstairs to San Simion for another engaging panel discussion. This one titled Bridging the Gap: Aligning Expertise and Infrastructure in Research Support, focuses on the often underappreciated and understaffed role of the RCD and Cloud professionals who help researchers get their work in the Cloud. Come hear a variety of perspectives both on the issues and the approaches being taken to address them.*
• Just before lunch we will hear from the UNLV team in Innovating for Impact: Scaling HSI Success with Cloud-Driven Solutions. We will hear about their work to leverage central system data to create a resource hub for their researchers.  

*In Closing

A guiding ethos of Internet2 events is to connect, share, and discuss. As you listen to the wonderful variety of cloud research topics on Wednesday and Thursday, pause and reflect on the questions and ideas that occur to you, specifically around the technology support researchers need, and whether those needs are being met. On Thursday afternoon, we’ll hold an unconference on research support. When an idea occurs to you, add it to the list by submitting it here: https://tinyurl.com/CX25-Unconference. The form will be open until noon on Thursday. When we gather for the unconference, those in attendance will vote on which submitted topics we’ll discuss. Put the conference to work for you!

 

Regards,

 

Bob Flynn (he/him/his)

Sr. Program Manager

Cloud Infrastructure & Platform Services

Internet2 NET+ Services

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