I just want milk that tastes like real milk QUTs Migration of Staff - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

#THETA2015� “I just want milk that tastes like real milk” QUT’s Migration of Staff Email to the Cloud Michael Boyle – Assoc Director, Infrastructure Services Nathan Howard – Project Manager This� work� is� licensed� under� a� Crea ve� Commons� A ribu on� 4.0� Interna onal� License.� �

Email as a commodity  Everyone likes it slightly different and uses it for a variety of purposes  Few large providers and some small ones  It’s “Just email” but is a critical service  A “free” service doesn’t mean a free implementation  As a commodity service, reputation is currency.

QUT’s Journey (1/2) • Comparison of Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365 • Discovery pilot with Office 365 2012 • Proposal for funding Q3 Q4 • Formation of a working party • Survey and focus groups – staff • Formation of User Reference Group attitudes towards email • Completion of risk legal analysis • Appointment of PM • Start of contract negotiations 2013 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 • Development of initial User Profiles • Formation of Technical Reference Group • Faculty, institute and divisional impact analysis • Requirements gathering • Socialisation of impacts and proposed solution • Survey of other universities for students / HDR students • Commence analysis of policies, processes, • Finalisation of contract negotiations interfaces and technologies • Commence risk legal analysis

QUT’s Journey (2/2) • Cloud Identity Alignment • Project resource onboarding • Detailed planning • Staff migration preparation • Detailed design • Initial design and • Change readiness planning approach Phase 2: Service Transition 2014 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Phase 1: Preparation • Commence staff migrations • Student email relay removal • Continued staff migrations • HDR account migration 2015 Q1 Q2 Phase 2: Service Transition • Transition infrastructure decommissioning • Project close

Project planning: Advice A. Analogous projects are difficult to find. B. Expect the project to take at least 9 months. C. Expect a constant evolution of the cloud service during the project. D. Expect to apply continuous improvement to the rollout/transition process.

What kind of milk do you have now? Understanding the current environment Source: http://almondmilk.net/almond-milk-vs-milk/

QUT Starting State Onsite Service Cloud Service • Outlook 2007 for 50% of users • 23,000 staff, visitor, managed and resource accounts • 55,000 active students • 2,200 HDR accounts • >200,000 student alumni • Email relay for systems • Separate onsite and cloud • Redirection relay to a student’s passwords chosen 3 rd party mailbox • Separate email archive • Dynamic list management • 6 physical, 41 VMs, 180TB of allocated space 32TB mailbox data Growth of 500MB / month

QUT End-State Onsite Service Cloud Service • • All staff, visitors, students and Email relay for systems • alumni Dynamic list management • • Integrated, searchable email 8 VMs archive • Same password as onsite services • Self-service for redirection to other mailboxes

Current environment: Advice A. Spend as much time as needed to understand the current technical environment, system usage, metrics and costs. B. Understand your user profiles/scenarios and related business processes. C. You may not be able to do A and B until you start migration.

Pasteurisation Legal analysis and contract negotiation I care about privacy Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur

Legal analysis and contracts: QUT Journey  Complex hierarchy of Microsoft contracts, Terms of Service, CAUDIT amendments, and legal frameworks  Quarterly evolution of the ToS  Qld privacy laws and email offshoring of data  Records management  Successfully negotiated contract amendment addressing privacy and licensing

Legal analysis and contracts: Advice A. Understand all the current contracts and get legal advice in order to ask the right questions. B. Decide the business imperatives and negotiate on these.

Homogenisation Staff engagement and expectations Source: http://www.albertamilk.com/ask-dairy-farmer/why-is-milk-homogenized/

Staff engagement and expectations: QUT Journey  Engaged a full-time Change and Communications Officer.  Staff forums on all campuses to explain the issues, process, timeline.  Adjusted our user profiles, communications and support model through the migration.  Each organisational unit/faculty has a different personality and required a different style of engagement.  Most users had a small impact. Small group of highly impacted users spread across the university.

Staff engagement and expectations: Advice A. Perform an organisational change risk assessment to determine your change strategy and use a model (Prosci). B. Expect people not to understand their current state and to be disengaged (until they are impacted). C. Communication suggestions: 1. Use a ‘preferred sender’ for communications to organisational areas 2. Use email for most people, paper for awareness, face-to-face for highly impacted users 3. Prepare for some people who will be highly impacted 4. Prepare early communications collateral and FAQs. D. Balance speed of migration with attention to people for a smoother transition. E. Demonstrate empathy with highly impacted people.

The supermarket dairy aisle Service relationship with a commodity provider Source: http://www.healthandlovepage.com/stop-drinking-low-fat-milk/

Service relationship: QUT Journey  Experienced a standard, incident-based service support relationship despite providing advanced notice of future project events.  Proactive support and advice from Microsoft dependant on the knowledge and ability of the individual – varies greatly.  (ITIL) Change management from CSP is minimal  Licensing vs subscription  Technical partners reach within Microsoft was dependant on personal relationships.  Support for the online environment not included in agreement.

Service relationship: Advice A. Pay attention and understand the impacts to your service and users. B. Develop a great relationship with the CSP Technical Account Manager. Develop and understand techniques for escalation within CSP. C. Support responses will be approached by the CSP as reactive incidents , without view of the wider project context. D. Purchase sufficient Premier Support hours as part of the project budget.

Amino acids and peptide bonds Technical Issues

Technical Issues: QUT Journey Key technical design challenges (service):  Authentication (ADFS vs Shibboleth)  Upstream services and email addresses changes  Active directory sizes and object limits  Two tenancies behaving differently. Key technical hurdles (project):  Synchronisation of identities with the cloud  Exchange hybrid configuration on-campus and cloud  Service performance for the end-user at the desktop.

Technical Issues: Advice A. Engage a partner who has a Premier Support Partner agreement, expect to pay for it. B. Extended time between CSP technician and university technician produces the best problem resolution outcomes. C. Explain the business impact and client pain. D. Expect to re-tune the current client desktop environment and engage both front office and back office technicians.

Cheese and Ice Cream Leveraging other cloud products http://cargocollective.com/jackyong/Care-2-Share

Other O365 products: QUT’s Journey  Products changed features and branding throughout the life of the project (SkyDrive > OneDrive, Office > OfficeProPlus, Lync > Skype for Business).  Although presented as seamless items to ‘turn on’, each service/product may have hidden complexities including: • Licensing • Legal issues • Identity management • Integration • Organisational change management and messaging.

Other O365 products: Advice A. Consider each service separately with a separate business case and well considered design approach. B. Understand your entitlements ; consider changes from licensing to subscriptions carefully.