Innovation in LMS: Infrastructure-as-a-Service

Yesterday, we continued highlighting excerpts of Khalil Yazdi's whitepaper, Innovation in LMS: Underlying Economic Drivers--Motivating a New Model for the Provisioning of Course, Teaching and Learning Management Software Systems, and explored Yazdi's examination how Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), a variant of an externally-hosted solution that separates the middleware services from the business application layer within the traditional IT infrastructure, permits institutions to leverage best-of-breed solutions.

Today, we're highlighting Yazdi's examination of a concept very similar to SaaS, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). IaaS--like SaaS--presumes that middleware and business applications can be managed and operated independently of where and how core infrastructure is provided.

As we continue exploring Yazdi's arguments, let us know how you think LMS delivery is evolving, and what you'd like to see from this wave of LMS innovation. Feel free to discuss in the comments below.

Innovation in LMS: Infrastructure-as-a-Service

In the case of core infrastructure, IaaS is now a common offering as an alternative to internal provisioning. IaaS involves virtualization of server and storage systems in a manner that allows “multipletenancy” in the same physical environment without loss of physical and logical security or privacy. IaaS architectures are designed to make the most effective and efficient use of storage and server resources. Similar to SaaS, IaaS presumes that middleware and business applications can be managed and operated independently of where and how core infrastructure is provided.
If an institution is considering IaaS, here are some qualities to consider when shopping around:

Infrastructureas-a-Service (IaaS)
Things to look for:

Interoperability – operates to common standards (with certification);

Load balancing – allows for portability of workloads (ability to burst workload to other clouds, especially useful for “hybrid” provisioning);

Availability and reliability – has services and channel partners to minimize network latency and ensure high availability has SLAs and QOS characteristics that meet services requirements of clients;

Manageability – interoperability of system management tools (such as configuration, load monitoring, testing, quality control, discovery tools);

Data Protection and governance – has a structure to manage data virtualization, replication, retention, protection, purging, access, logging, compliance.