By David Shaw
Industry statistics show that overall IT departments spend
80% of budget on maintaining core data-centre technology and only 20% on the applications
(e.g., an LMS) that deliver the real value for an organization. IT is a cost
centre, not a strategic asset.
It’s worse with eLearning. Our experience is that
successfully implementing and managing an LMS/LCMS is beyond the capability of
most IT organizations. Yes, they can install it and get it running but beyond
that they simply don’t have the domain experience. Their experience is in structured
data (databases) and they regard courseware as unstructured data. Worse, they
believe eLearning is essentially PowerPoints running on a web server; they
don’t know how to stream video on the intranet; they won’t support half the
file formats common in eLearning courseware; and they’re too concerned about
Bring Your Own Device to even think about mobile courses.
Cloud Computing can change this.
Like mobile it seemed that Cloud Computing would always be
out there somewhere, always several years in the future. But in the same way consumers
pushed mobile computing into the enterprise without IT, they are consuming and
promoting cloud computing in many guises and bringing it into rogue business
units. Here are just a few examples of Cloud Services that you may have used or
heard about:
- Automatic upgrades of software on your computer
- Amazon, FaceBook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube and others reside on vast globally distributed Cloud Computing platform
- Stores like Apple iTunes, Google Play, Windows Store
- File hosting services like Box, Dropbox, Flickr, Google Drive, iCloud, Instagram, Microsoft (Live) SkyDrive, UbuntuOn
- Free eMail services like Hotmail (Live Mail), Gmail, Zoho Mail, AIM Mail, iCloud Mail, Outlook, Yahoo!, and a dozen others
- Online backup services like IDrive, KinectD, MozyHome, Nero, Norton
- Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365, Zoho office tools
- Google Chromebook cloud computers
- Windows 8 pushing users onto the MS Cloud as the default
- Apple pushing users onto iCloud
- Microsoft’s Lift London studio developing new games exclusively for the cloud
- Wix is a really cool cloud service for developing web sites
What these have in common is that they are a form of Cloud
Computing called Software as a Service (SaaS). Other cloud types not discussed
here (and potentially of greater interest to the IT department) are Platform as
a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
What does SaaS mean for eLearning? There are four basic ways
for an organization to operate an LMS or LCMS:
- Internal Hosted
- Hosted Service
- Shared Service
- Software as a Service
Internal Hosted is a non-cloud single-tenant model. This is the traditional scenario where an
LMS/LCMS is implemented and hosted by an IT department or business unit on
local servers. The main advantage is direct control over governance and
security. The disadvantages are lengthy and difficult procurement processes,
and the need for capital investment that may be hard to get. Capacity is always
a step function, so you capitalise servers over the forecast demand or
experience loads that cause reduced service from too little capacity.
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Hosted Service is also a non-cloud single-tenant model. This
is the same as Internal Hosted except that it has been outsourced to a service
provider who supplies the servers and manages the LMS/LCMS software
application. This is sometimes called Managed Service. The servers can be
located on premises or externally, depending on the arrangement. The advantage
is that you don’t need IT approval for a capital expense because this is usually
a leased service. The disadvantage is that you do need IT approval. This model
also suffers from over- or under-capacity issues.
Shared Service is a non-cloud several-tenant model. This is
an Internal Hosted model in which a few separate business units or
organizations share a software application run by a centralised service
provider to reduce costs. For example, enterprise web applications like Drupal,
Joomla, SharePoint, WebSphere, WordPress and many others can be used to set up
more than one web-site domain.
Typically partitioning of user data and content is very
weak. Typically the oversight model is weak and bureaucratic. Often the users
do not have end-to-end ownership of process. Security and governance, including
content approval, are often subject to the business processes and delays of the
chief business owner. New functionality, performance levels, service-level
agreements and changes to the service are difficult to negotiate. This model
also suffers from over- or under-capacity issues. It’s a popular government mantra
but only a few practitioners have shown significant cost savings.
Software as a Service is a multi-tenant cloud model. This is
an external software application from a service provider that runs on top of a
stack of PaaS and IaaS cloud services. SaaS uses hypervisor virtualization to
separate tenants. The software and database are architected for multiple
tenants with strong partitioning of user and content data.
Security is managed by the SaaS provider. For protection, usually
data is fragmented across several geophysical locations and often encrypted.
The service-level agreement may be standard and difficult to customize. There
is no capital cost – a major benefit. This model matches capacity to demand
dynamically, and charges only for usage.
However, under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of
1986, the Patriot Act of 2001 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of
1978/2012 the US government can still access any data without a warrant if it
is stored in the USA or if the service provider falls under US jurisdiction.
Access does not have to be for reasons of national security – the legislation
allows warrantless access for political and economic reasons, too.
Also, as an
aside, any email stored in the USA over 180 days is not private or privileged.
In 2013 the FBI’s priority was to get new powers under the 1994
surveillance law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.
The FBI wants the power to mandate real-time surveillance of email, cloud services,
or online chat providers like Skype. This is everything from Dropbox and online
games to Live Mail, Outlook Mail, Gmail and Google Voice.
As a simple matter of due diligence and security from
economic espionage data should not be stored with US service providers unless
extremely strong encryption is used on the client-side (keys should not be
stored in the cloud). This is a thorny issue for service-level agreements.
Some of the benefits of SaaS are:
- Lowering the opportunity cost of running technology. Opportunity cost is the cost of not doing something, thus foregoing future benefits.
- Allowing for a shift of costs from capital expenditure to operating expenditure, which makes it much easier to acquire technology.
- Lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO) of technology (resources are pooled).
- Giving organizations the ability to add business value by renewed focus on core activities by spending 20% on core technology and 80% on better business applications.
- Enabling IT to focus on the strategic aspects of its role.
- Empowering small- and medium-sized organizations through access to global-scale technology at utility prices.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has
defined several essential characteristics for a cloud service:
- On-demand self-service so an end user can sign up and receive services without the long delays that have characterized traditional IT.
- Broad network access via standard platforms (desktop, laptop, mobile, etc.).
- ·Resource-pooling across multiple customers who share bandwidth, load balancing, servers and databases.
- ·Rapid elasticity so the service can scale to cope with demand peaks. This means the service level is always matched to the demand so you don’t pay for over-capacity or lose users from under-capacity.
- Measured service with billing metered and delivered as a utility service the same way we consume electricity and water.
Some so-called cloud services charge by the number of users
but we would argue that this is just a form of hosted self-service. A true
utility service, e.g., electricity, doesn’t care how many people are in the
house.
An LMS is a good candidate for SaaS. At this time there are several hosted self-service LMS providers: Articulate Online, BizLibrary CompanyCollege LMS, Docebo Cloud, ePath Learning ASAP, Epignosis LTD, eFront Enterprise LMS, Zenler Online and probably more.
An LMS meets some of the criteria for a cloud service, such
as:
- It is not a differentiating or core business application
- It is usually web-facing
- Users need access from desktop, laptop, mobile, etc.
- Demand can be spiky when training campaigns are underway
- Global delivery through content-distribution networks
- It can be managed by business departments
An LCMS is not a good candidate for SaaS. It meets some
criteria for not using a cloud service,
such as:
- It is not web-facing (it’s a back-end system to a web-facing LMS)
- It does not have to scale rapidly to meet demand
- It is a value-added service that differentiates the organization (especially with content re-use)
- It involves uploading many and often large files that consume bandwidth
