IT@Cornell

Well, I’ve done rather poorly of late in keeping up my blog posts. November was a hectic month of travel, which typically means the days in the office are even more jammed with meetings than usual. That’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation

Earlier in the fall I told you about an exciting new “above campus” service to be delivered by Box (box.net), after initial contractual arrangements were successfully negotiated by Internet2′s “Net+” division. As one of a handful of early adopters, Cornell was considering launching the service as early as this calendar year: I had asked the team to go for an early December start.

While a lot of very good progress has been made, we (the early adopter schools and Net+) have more work to do to ensure that Box has implemented all of the technical, functional, security, and policy requirements deemed necesary by higher-education institutions. Consequently, Cornell is now looking forward to a phased roll out in early 2012.

While I’m a little disappointed by the delay, I also recognize that we are doing something that has not been done before: brokering a cloud service on behalf of the broader higher education community, defined here as members of Internet2. We’re not breaking the mold, we are creating the first mold from which all others that follow will learn and improve upon. There are teams comprised of IT talent from the early adopter schools who are working on strategic issues ranging from the legal language of a standard contract that any adopting school will be able to use, security, support, and more. I am impatient, but these things do take time, especially when it is the first time.

There remains a great deal of interest, on campus and beyond, in the box.net service. The last time I checked, a couple of weeks ago, there was a backlog of more than 50 Internet2 member schools waiting to sign-up for the services, once we get the final details ironed out. Here at home, there has been a lot of interest and also a lot of inquiry about the service.

In response to campus interest, Cornell’s Box team is planning an open forum on Tuesday, December 20th, 10:00-11:00 a.m., in G10, Biotech. An announcement will be sent very soon to various lists, as broadly as possible. I’m sure there will be other forums (fora?) in the new year. We will continue to keep you apprised of progress toward the early 2012 roll-out.