DRAFT
Project Name:
Commodity Services
Project Proposal Originators:
Chris Dempsey, Graduate Division
Project Implementers:
TBD
Project Beneficiaries:
Entire campus.
Problem Statement
A number of services, including e-mail, web, ftp, file serving, and database, have become more or less standardized in basic features and protocols. Some of these services can be defined as "commodity services," where for most users there is little differentiation between products. This document proposes the establishment of a working group where common services are identified as commodities, standards for delivering these services are developed, and resources are distributed to centralize these services. By centralizing the provision of certain basic services, cost and resource savings can be made with relatively minimal investment.
Project Summary
Several services, including telephone, electricity, heating, and so on, are considered standard and are provided to staff, faculty, and students. Because they are standard, typically one or two departments are charged with providing them. Utilities have counterparts in information technology, including services such as the campus network, domain naming system (DNS), network time protocol (NTP), news (NNTP), and the campus mainframe. These services are capably delivered by the Office of Information Technology (OIT) and Information Systems & Computing (IS&C), organizations which have the fiscal and technical resources, and organizational visibility and responsibility necessary for implementation.
This proposal would establish an ongoing process to identify those services which either are too expensive or complicated to implement in a decentralized fashion, represent potentials for savings due to economies of scale and increased efficiencies, or have become so standardized that there is little need for differing implementations. After identifying a service as a commodity, resources could be reallocated from individual service providers to corporate systems.
Current discussion has focused on e-mail and web services, using the analogy of the $10/month/site analogy of services provided by a basic Internet Service Provider (ISP). Other services proposed include centralized file storage, database, and ftp. All are services with common general features and well-defined interfaces.
UCSB Visionary Requirements
Currently, information technology resources are decentralized across campus. In many scenarios, decentralized service provision is ideal. These services include applications that are unique to a single organization, or that require local staff to implement effectively. However, identifying and shifting services towards centralized providers will require consensus among campus executives and current service providers.
Costs and Benefits: Initial-Year and Recurring
Unknown, varying by the type of service centralized.
Matching Opportunities
The proposal has matching opportunities in the New Business Architecture. The Centralized Credit Card Processing proposal is a type of service, currently provided by distributed organizations, that has been proposed to be centralized.
Project Timeline
Project Priority
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