Internet of Things

There's quite a few sessions at the conference about the Internet of Things. I've just been to one that started by asking the question, why should we work on the Internet of things? Should we be an IoT leader or laggard? Option is not do we want to do it, it's coming, but should we be leaders for it.

One of the things examined was the hype cycle for IoT. The hype cycle is a way Gartner explains how mature new technologies are. Basically OU start with a technology trigger or idea, and they hype around it quickly projects it to the peak of inflated expectations. It's going to solve all of our problems, do wonderful things. Then, when it doesn't deliver, it hurtles downward to the trough of disillusionment, where we think it will never work. Eventually, it climbs the curve of enlightenment where it reaches the plateau of productivity, effectively becoming mainstream. Some drop off along the way and never make it, some take longer than others. It's a good way of visualising where technologies are. It's clear from this one...

That most things are still not mature, and are the top of the hype. Including one of the things we're looking at implementing, iBeacons,

Lots of issues around data, both the amount that will be generated and collected, and the security, privacy and ethics around it.

Also issues around the platform, for the foreseEable future it will be best of breed solutions. There will be no single platforms or vendors.

So, what applications are there for IoT in what we do? We already use it to detect the status of our printers, we're looking at implementing iBeacons, but what else should we be looking at? It's really taking off in the consumer space, and perhaps we need to look there for ideas.

 

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Opening keynote. It's all about the algorithm

Gartner Symposium kicking off in earnest today. 20 minutes to opening keynote, and already huge auditorium is almost full!

There's always a bit of a buzz in the room,as we wait to find out what messages we're going to get! Always a very professional and well rehearsed opening. Lots of loud music, video, animations...

And we're off.....

Digital business seems to be the message. CEOs need to focus on security, disruption and digital business.

CIOs more important than ever.

Interesting that security is first thing to be mentioned. Not surprising I suppose with recent events.

 

Message to business is that you need two business models. Analogue and digital. Digital commerce now worth one trillion euros annually. Need to bring virtual and physical worlds together. Successful businesses are creating innovation units running alongside traditional. Bimodal. Need new platforms. Mode 2 platform uses cloud. Less about data gathering but more about intelligent algorithms which act on the data.

Digital technology platform has to support digital initiatives in the organisation. Ownership of technology has shifted, less owned by central IT, Consumerisation, Internet of things etc has shifted IT into the business. CIOs have less control. This is not bad news. We have to be influencers, not controllers. Influence scales, control does not.

Algorithms are important now, not just collecting data. Algorithms define actions and business processes. Used by many apps, eg WAZE, driverless cars etc. In 5 years we will have our own algorithms in the cloud, virtual personal assistants. We are entering the post app era.

There are new risks emerging with these new technologies. By 2020 50% of large enterprises will have a Digital Risk Officer who manages IT, OT and IoT risk. Concern is not just protection from outside, but safety and quality. Think driverless cars.

Start with resilience. Simplify systems. Stable systems are more secure.

Detect and respond. Need to sense dormant threats before it is too late, and act on them.

Focus on people. People centric security. People are often the easy target. Many hacks start from people, eg phishing. Need to transform our cultures.

Move security more away from protection to more detect and respond on basis that hacking is here to stay!

Final part of keynote is about some practical examples of how we can change. Lots about the economics of connections. How we can leverage the interconnectivity of everything. Using the principal of give, take multiply. Make things, like big data, available for others to use. Take data from others, and then multiply your connections. Some interesting examples such as Tesla who have released their patents for their supercharger. Seems odd, but the more manufacturers use it, the more they are tied into to Tesla. Also examples from wearables. South African insurance company that rewards good behaviour, eg exercise, healthy eating etc, as measured by apple watch.

So, in order to progress, we have to get rid of some things:

Legacy fatalism - we can't do anything with these old systems

Ownership bias - we have to own everything. But, if someone can do something better then you, let them.

Cloud fear - cloud is unsafe, insecure. Actually Cloud systems are more secure than in-house ones. None of recent hacks were on cloud systems, and wouldn't have happened if they had been.

So, in summary, digital business is here. It's all about Bimodal, security and algorithms!

 

 

 

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Start of Gartner Symposium, Student Systems Landscape

I'm at the Gartner Symposium at the moment, a huge conference, covering all sectors, public, private, education. It's really interesting to rub shoulders and sit in sessions with CIOs and senior IT managers from many different companies. Having said that, the main session I went to today was specifically aimed at Higher Education, and was about the Student System landscape. As usual I'll try and get posts up thoughout the conference, so they will be in note form and please excuse the grammar, spelling and spacing as this blogging app keeps putting extra line spaces!

Student systems are old. Their average age according to a recent EDUCAUSE survey is 13 years. Many of them are heavily customised, especially older ones.

This survey from 2013 reported that few were thinking of changing. But more institutions are now thinking about replacing their student system, possibly because new players emerging.

We are on threshold of next generation SIS, this is their history:

• Homegrown solutions arrived in 1980
• Vended SIS emerged in 1990s, mainly best of breed
• 2000 saw birth of ERP solutions
• 2005 we had open source dreams. Some public approaches to building open source systems eg Kuali. $10m spent on open source system but not there yet.
• 2015 on threshold of next generation of cloud based systems

Current SIS systems are like the Tin man in a yoga class- Very inflexible.

They also give a very poor user experience, and are Institution centric not student centric. Not surprising as most were originally written To automate back office functions. They have limited mobile or social functionality, are transaction orientated, and it is difficult to mine the data in them

Traditional business model support. Hard to support non traditional students and courses.

Heavy on premise footprint.

Increasingly costly to sustain.

All the above for something that often isn't perceived as being that good!

Over next few years the market will change. On supply side, new vendors entering the space, some original vendors are doing new things. New players coming from Asia. Not ready yet but will mature.

By 2017 at least 75% of new systems will be SaaS or cloud based

Through 2018 more than 10% of education institutions will adopt cloud based ERP offerings from India.

Vendos evolving their existing SIS include:

• Campus management
• Ellucian
• Jenzabar
• Oracle
• SAP
• Tribal

Vendors building new SIS systems include:

• Jenzabar
• Kuali
• Oracle. New SIS being built specifically to manage non traditional programmes etc
• SAP
• Unit4 (acquired three rivers systems). Developing a new system, cloud based. Will be launched in January 2016.
• Workday. 2 years into building a student system.

Emerging solutions coming from Asia Pacific region.

CIOs need to consider whether their strategy is it to refresh, replace or renovate ( throw out what's bad, keep what's good, buy new modules)

Student system is deconstructing. If you were starting today would you build something to cover everything? Probably not. Current systems are not just big, they're bloated.

People are building modules, eg for admissions, often on top of CRM such as workforce.

Are new admissions platform being developed in the UK eg Full Fabric

Monolithic ERP/SIS suites willgive way to cloud based modules for things like enrolment, recruitment, curriculum management, records and registration, course evaluation

We will need different architectures and integrations. Loosely coupled systems which are flexible and agile.

At same time, components are getting richer. Being built on modern technology including:

• SAAS
• Flexible
• Native CRM
• Real time analytics
• Modular design
• Standards based
• Data interoperability
• SOA
• Supporting non traditional students and courses

There's a lot of investment in educational technology and with a blurring of borders around SIS, CRM. LMS, there are New business model opportunities emerging.

We should expect to be working with more and smaller vendors

The ERP mega suite vendors should not dominate our strategy

Use this HOOF model to work out where we are, where we are heading, and what we could do differently.

Integration strategy is key. Will need multiple integration technologies. IT has a major responsibility for it, but the business needs to be involved.

Look at business process outsourcing as a possible solution in some areas.

Analytics is going to be very important:

Two very important take home points:

Review legacy vendor road maps, but watch and evaluate emerging vendors.

Don't let a single ERP vendor dominate

 

Excellent talk, and very relevant for us at the moment!

 

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Gratuitous cat picture....

As well as a lot of catch up meetings this week, I've spent quite a lot of time judging the Amber Miro award.  Amber was a great character, chair of the UCISA Support Services group, wore the most amazing red lipstick, had an amazing ability to innovate and motivate, but sadly died far too young in 2012.

This award was set up to in her memory, and is intended to reward innovation. This year we asked for the submissions to be in the form of a video - so I've spent some very enjoyable time this week watching and scoring them. There were some cracking ideas, and some great videos. Will announce winners on here when I can!

Other things so far this week include a meeting with our JISC account manager, and a liaison meeting with our our estates department.

This is a bit of a short post, so I'll leave you with a picture of two of my cats. One fat one asleep on my bed, and one looking at me intently, trying to will me to get out of bed and feed him. He failed. 

Water feature in the IC

Yesterday I got a call to say that there was a flood in the Information Commons Yes, there had been heavy rain, but the University is on the top of a hill so I was a bit bemused....  When I got there I discovered that due to a problem with drainage, water had built up on the flat roof until it had overflowed, and we had what amounted to a waterfall water feature down one of the walls. It was really quite spectacular. I had been called not just because we jointly manage the facility, but because the Duty Manager wanted a standby incident manager. I'm one of the trained IMs for a major University incident, but after some discussion with the duty manager we decided it wasnt an mjor incident, but I would remain on standby and keep a watching brief. We went through our checklistsof who had been informed and needed to be involved - Health and Safety, Insurance, Comms, EFM, Cleaning, Library. And of course us - we needed to check that no equipment had been damaged - we were lucky that only a couple of PCs had been splashed, but we were more worried that water might have gathered under the floor and damaged our network cables. luckily it hadnt'!  The EFM team were great, climbed onto the roof and drained the water away until a drainage company arrived to clear the drains. Only part of the building had to be closed, and after a catch up nmeeting later inthe day, and inspection the following moring it was reopened.

Today we had a conference call with another University who are arranging a major incident simulation and wanted our advice on how to organise it - I think we were able to give them plenty. We've had a lot of practice recently!

Quantity vs quality

In the last couple of days I've had a meeting with our newly appointed Digital Learning leads. A great discussion - we talked about where technology enhanced learning is going, what the coverage is like across our different departments, what barriers there are in adopting TEL, and what the future looks like. We also touched on what makes a Learning Technologist - how are they different from an IT technician. It's very clear to us, but not so clear in departments, where IT support staff are being rebranded as learning technologists, when they have no experience in learning, just the technology. It's important that LTs understand the pedagogy - it's how technology can be used to enhance learning which is important, not just the technology itself.

I also met the Vice-Chancellor for a regular catch up where we discussed a Digital Strategy for the University.

Following that I went to our UEB/HoDS forum where our Executive Board and heads of department meet to discuss different topics. This time we were looking at student recruitment. In particular, what was more important, quantity or quality. Should we take more students, no matter what grades they have, or take only the higher graded students to keep our tarif score up. After a couple of presentations we had a lively discussion on the tables - I'm not sure we came to a conclusive answer though!

Finally today I had a meeting with an IT Director from another Institution. Newly appointed she was keen to catch up with what's happening in the sector, and it was a very useful exchange of ideas.

A testing time..

We take Business Continuity and Incident Management very seriously, and hold a major incident simulation annually. Today we had another - quite scary as usual - and although a group of us were asked to assemble at a particular time with no idea what would happen, we had a suspicion it would be based on a reputation incident rather than a physical one due to the presence of most of our comms team.

So, we arrived, and this was the calm before the storm....

After a short briefing we were off. Thank goodness I wasn't Incident Manager, but part of a standby team - in a separate room, waiting to be called. We were played a short radio clip, supposedly from Radio Sheffield about 4 students being arrested at dawn, supposedly from University accommodation, and not given much more information. NOTE  - THIS WAS A SIMULATION - IT DIDN'T REALLY HAPPEN.  Sorry about the shouting. Apparently simulations have been known to become real incidents when information has leaked and people haven't realised.  As well as the information we were drip fed, we also had a twitter feed to follow. Four members of CiCS had 10 fake twitter accounts with different profiles - students, staff, local resident, journalist etc - and tweeted from them from the duration of the incident. We had the incident team in one room, and the comms team in another. The whole thing was a test of how we would repond to an incident receiveing a lot of media and social media attention, when we had little information. I was late to be called, so I did what I would have done in real life, and stormed in asking what was going on :-)  Then I was asked to step outside (for a breath of fresh air) and was doorstepped by a BBC journalist complete with camera and microphone and had to give a live interview.

Later we had a press conference, with an elected spokesperson and a number of nasty journalists in the audience (including me).

It was very tiring, stressful, enjoyable, interesting - and a great test of how we might cope.  Somethings went really well, others could do with improving, but that's what it was for - to learn from.

Futurescape

Today I went to a Samsung event in London, Futurescape. We'd been invited because we talking to them about providing some technology support for our next UCISA conference and we wanted to see

the sort of things they could offer. It was a good showcase of their display technology, and they had a number of partners with applications showing how it can be used.

Based on the theme of the mobile workforce, they had mocked up how the technology could be used in an airport, a warehouse, a station, an office.... They'd also got some interesting virtual reality demos.

The presentations focused on the pace of change of technology and the rise of mobile technology at home and at work. Everyone wants and needs a mobile device - and just one. No-one  wants a work one and a personal one, so we're in a world where personal data and mobile payments have to live in harmony with corporate systems and email. apparently 80% of people interviewed in a recent survey said that they couldn't do their job without mobile technology, but only 33% said that the technology they were provided with at work met their need. 29% said that they use their own mobile technology to fill gaps in work technology. Would be interesting to know what the figures would be if Universities were surveyed.

Final talks - funding and student engagement

Some of the other sessions at the Higher and Further Education show included:

A talk from the Director of Finance from HEFCE about how the funding environment has changed. You can see from this slide how the funding distributed by HECE has decreased, and how for the first time in 2015/16 they are distributing more research funding than teaching funding. 

A session from the Chair of AUDE (Association of University Estates Directors) about how we have to deliver more value from our estate. Our estate is very big, and very costly so we have to drive as much value out of it as we can, by using as efficiently as possible, and looking for commercial opportunities.

An excellent talk from our own Deputy Vice Chancellor Shearer West, after only 6 weeks in post, on some of our excellent initiatives in student engagement. These included the  #weareinternational campaign run jointly with our Student Union to raise the profile of what it meant to be a global university which now has over 100 universities supporting it. She also talked about our advanced apprenticeship scheme, SURE which provides research experience for undergraduates, and of course, the concept of the Sheffield Graduate. Good to see the Diamond get a mention too!

The closing keynote was David Willets, the former Minister for Universities and Science on the funding of university education - who benefits from it, and who should pay for it.

All in all an excellent day. I hadn't been to ExCel before - it's huge!  And the show managed to pack a lot of high quality speakers into one day. 

Learning Analytics, a shared service

Interesting session on Learning Analytics from Phil Richard, Chief Innovation Officer at  JISC

Learning analytics is the application of big data techniques such as machine based learning and data mining to help learners and institutions meet their goals. 

Everytime a learner touches something digital, they leave a digital fingerprint. By looking at changes in these, can improve retention, achievement, employability, and help deliver personalised learning

Learning analytics has been requested as a new national shared service by the sector.

This is the proposed architecture. Shared multi tenanted data warehouse at the centre. 

Will be a staff dashboard, and also will present the data back to students through an app.

JISC have been out to tender and filled all slots with commercial partners except student consent service. Going to build that themselves.

The data model is consistent with the HEDIP landscape and HESA data service.

Commercial partners are Unicom, Marist, Blackboard, Tribal, Therapy, Box and HT2. Half are open source.

Staff dashboard will be delivered through Tribal insight. Will show how a student digital fingerprint changes. Eg if a student stops attending lectures, borrowing books, but spending more on thier cashless card at midnight in the bar it might trigger an alarm for some sort of human intervention. Should help with retention, student well being.

Will be an app which feeds back data to the students so for example they can set targets. Can even share targets for a bit of competition.

Are some ethical questions. JISC have produced a code of practice to help with issues such as informed consent.

Also is a guide produced by NUS

Working with universities to build the system which they hope will be running before Christmas

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Efficiency and VFM in Universities

Next up is Sir Ian Diamond, who has been leading the efficiency agenda for several years.

HE is one of most important economic sectors, very effective in our contribution to the National Economy. Nice infographic:

Education transforms lives and promotes social cohesion. We are a very effective sector, but have also to be efficient.

In the last five years there have been a number of changes. HE has been focussed on increasing efficiency and value for money. Capital fudging has reduced enormously but investment by Universities has been maintained,The tuition fee value has been eroded in England, efficiency and cost saving is mandated in other parts of the UK, the science and research budget has had a c£600m real term reduction.

We are faced with challenges, but this is not new. We have had to meet efficiency targets over the last 10 years, and these have all been met. For example, over £435m has been saved between 2011 and 2014 in procurement efficiency. Pay growth has been in line with public and private sectors. Huge savings also made in IT ( have they?).

Efficiencies also made in shared services and estates

Gold star to N8 universities who have done magnificent things in equipment sharing

What's the future?

Unprotected departments in government are being told to model cuts of 25% to 40%. BIS is biggest unprotected department. Clear sense that there will be big changes in BIS. 

Areas we need to look at include (all in last Diamond report):

• Maintaining a high quality workforce.
• Delivering more value from our university estate. Will be more estate sharing. Need to utilise space better.
• Deliver a world class and sustainable research base. Need to make a robust case for greater investment in the research base.
• Harness the benefits of asset sharing.
• Unlock the value of higher education data. Huge opportunity in open data. Need to facilitate and stimulate greater use of open data.
• Collaborate! Need more collaboration and sharing of good practice.

It is imperative that we demonstrate what we are doing and evidence our success

UUK, HEFCE RCUK and professional bodies must work together to develop a framework.

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The Future of Work

At the ExCel in London today for the Higher and Further Education Show. Lots of top people here from different agencies across the sector, and an interesting mix of sessions.

Opening one is from BT on The Future of Work: How Technology Innovation will transform our working environment. Given by Head of BT's Global Innovation Team. Working on a project on the future of work.

What are the trends influencing the future of work, and how should we be training students to enter this new world of work?

The Ds driving the future of work. 6 trends.

Dilbert. How physical workspaces are transforming . More choice about how and where we work. As a student at University, you don't have a desk. You move around seminar rooms, cafes, libraries. Activity based learning, some companies moving towards this. One size does not fit all. Some people like offices, cubicles some hate it and prefer open plan. Don't need to go into the office, can work from coffee shops, office hubs. Home working is more productive, but tough. People need to be social. Physical environments are big collaboration tools. Need to construct spaces where you can move around and select the environment you need for the task you are doing.

Distance

Not going to kill distance, but meeting face to face is becoming a luxury. Using FaceTime, Skype etc we are becoming more comfortable collaborating by video. But, some people don't like it. Voice is a good collaboration tool. But until recently it has been hard work to have multiple people on a conference call. BT has teamed up with Dolby to improve the sound. High definition sound, different voices separated in space, noise cancellation for heavy breathers! Improves engagement. But our inner Neanderthal needs to meet and form our tribes. Engage in augmented reality or virtual reality? Psychology is as important as the technology.

Dr No.

Consumerisation. Bring your own apps, hardware, software. IT dept don't like it. Say No. Of course this is changing. Need to take account of security etc, but accept it.

Dolly. (Parton, obviously)

From 9 to 5. This trend is dying, often we work in global companies. And we now blur work, home life. Constantly connected. Are we more productive? Need to handle work life balance

stance

Diversity

One of most interesting trends in workspace. We are culturally diverse. Gender diversity is important, especially in STEM subjects. Age diversity. For first time ever we have 5 generations in the workforce. We are living longer. Will need more education, skills will change over the period of work. Flexible working will become more important. Retaining staff, especially younger ones will be a challenge. Different age groups will have different expectations of work, and of the technology they use. Collaboration is increasingly a key skill. Technology for collaboration has changed, younger people share a lot more, possibly over sharing, happy with use of social media and chat. Older generations deeply suspicious of use of social media at work. They use email, which is a terrible collaboration tool! Some companies ban internal email. Danger is that we have little islands of people talking to each other. Leaders have to set the scene and become more social, it's all about networking. Good leaders are connectors.

You don't get innovation without diversity.

Droids

A lot of the things we assumed automation would never be able to do, they are starting to do eg language translation, driving a car, IBM Watson won jeopardy! Internet of things, smart cities all emerging. Are privacy and security implications for all of the data being collected. But, jobs will be automated out. Always happened eg printing press. typing pool. Taxi drivers probably doomed, either by Uber or self driving car.

We're seeing the rise of the assetless company. Instagram only had 13 employees when it was sold to Facebook for $1bn and had 30m users. Uber has 160000 drivers but doesn't own a car.

Robots may be able to out-diagnose a GP, but can't care.

We will need to educate people throughout their career. Will need flexibility and different types of education. We will be short of high skilled workers and too many low skilled ones. So need to upskill.

Sort of skills we will need are

Some traditional

Nursing

Personal Carers

Hairdressers, for women at least:-)

Some new ones

Virtual personality designers

Climate change engineers

Data scientists

Lifestyle auditor

Body part designers

DNA programmers

Interesting talk, especially around the age diversity in the workplace.

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Round up....

After the excitement of the Diamond opening, the week went a bit downhill as I became strikes with a lurgy, commonly known as Freshers Flu. And yes, I know it's not flu, and it probably doesn't come from Freshers, but hey, it's just a name :-).

Managed to make my first meeting of the Board of Trustees of Inspiration for Life. I was honoroured to be asked to join this board of a charitable trust set up to celebrate the life of Tim Richardson, a Physics lecturer who died of cancer in 2013. Some of the readers of this blog might remember posts about the 24 hour lecture which is held every year to remember him and raise money for charitable causes.

Also this week I went to a strategic liaison meeting with the Faculty of Science, and had another meeting with a head of department. I've almost got to the end of my road trip this summer visiting every HoD, and it's been an extremely interesting and valuable exercise and one I will try and repeat.

On Thursday evening I went to a dinner with members of the Board of the Grantham Centre for Sustainable development . This is a collaboration between the University and the Grantham Foundation to conduct research into sustainibilty, you can read more about it through the link above. Also at the dinner where some of the researchers, and we had a number of presentations and demonstrations of things they were researching into. My favourite of course was the drone, which is used for surveying crops. Unfortunately due to health and safety reasons, it could only hover, and not fly over the audience.

A very entertaining evening, and a great demonstration of the research we are doing into sustainibilty.

Off for a week now, back soon.

 

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