UW-IT and its partners across UW are developing a five-year cloud migration strategic plan to ensure greater security, flexibility and innovation for the UW community.
Currently, many of UW’s key computing systems and administrative functions are hosted by on-premises data centers. However, most of these aging data centers have no room to grow and demand for computing power, particularly with advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), soon will outpace their capacity.
This webpage is intended to give you a bird’s-eye view of high-level goals within the next five years, business drivers leading UW to adopt cloud solutions and things to keep in mind as UW-IT and the UW community partner together to adopt a plan that makes sense for the University. Visit us often to stay up to date with cloud strategy decisions.
High Level Goals
UW-IT and its partners have identified several key steps to ensure a smooth transition from on-premises data centers to the cloud:
- In five years, migrate most enterprise offerings to Cloud or replace by 3rd-party SaaS offerings
- In three years, scale up storage and computing environments (hybrid and multi-cloud) as well as the tooling to support a diverse research community including AI research
- In three years, transform the workforce to be Cloud proficient (via recruiting, training and development programs)
Business Drivers
UW-IT supports UW’s mission to preserve, advance and disseminate knowledge, and it believes that modern, secure and agile cloud services will help our community maintain a competitive advantage.
Cloud Promises
- Elasticity and economy of scale
- Innovation agility
- Fast-enhancing capabilities
- Rich tools, services and partner ecosystem
- Sustainability (“Green Cloud”)
- Business resilience
- Security posture
Macro Market View
- ~75% of organizations across all industries use cloud computing
- Global cloud computing market in dollars:
- 2023: $588 billion
- 2024: $676 billion
- 2032: $2.29 trillion
At UW
- Aging data centers and limited on-campus resources
- Increasing research computing demand
- AI Boom – huge computing demand
- Facility consolidation and sustainability
- Workforce future skillsets (from Creator to Curator)
Guiding Principles
A cloud-first strategy will allow UW administrative departments to reduce operational costs and increase efficiency. Researchers will have easier access to world-class computing tools minus the headaches of managing them.
Enterprise Principles
Maximize administrative efficiency and minimize total cost of ownership
- Cloud First
- Migrate existing workload to cloud*
- Use cloud services for new initiatives*
- SaaS Preferred
- Opt for packaged software solutions over custom-built ones
- Upgrade existing custom-built solutions to out-of-box SaaS solutions
- Microsoft First
- Use Microsoft technologies*
*Unless there are strong business reasons not to
Research Principles
Empower researchers to do best-in-class research work
- Flexibility First
- Cost-effective high-performance computing
- Best-fit cloud solutions
- Comprehensive toolsets and computing capabilities
- Usability Focused
- Free researchers to focus on research not on software, hardware and administration
Cloud Risks
We understand that change is not easy, and moving to the cloud has its risks. However, UW-IT and the UW community are working together to ensure that a cloud-first strategy is tailored-fit for the UW. Some issues that have been identified so far:
- Customer acceptance and onboarding
- Existing system complexity
- Data Privacy and Compliance
- Design for Cost (FinOps)
- Workforce proficiency
UW-IT is not working on cloud strategy on its own. Multiple stakeholders across the University are collaborating with UW-IT to ensure success as we move business-critical functions to the cloud. As a trusted and valued partner, we will strive to keep you informed. If you have any questions, direct them to help@uw.edu and visit this page to stay informed.