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Follow Our Progress

Moving to the cloud requires a complete transformation of IT culture and will fundamentally change the way we offer services to customers.

This transition will not happen overnight. It is a multi-year effort, built on incremental improvements as well as a larger cloud maturity plan with well-defined objectives. The scale and speed of cloud innovations demand a deliberate approach to process and architecture design to ensure a successful delivery of services.

how we’ll get there

Gartner Research recommends that organizations follow a multi-year Cloud Adoption Maturity Plan.

Overall progress is tracked along four phases of overall maturity: Elementary, Specialized, Multicloud, and Self-Service. Key milestones for successful cloud adoption are contained within five major workstreams: Organizational, Governance, Architecture, Provider Brokerage, Cloud Operations.

UCF IT will track its progress toward each milestone along the five workstreams and across each phase of cloud maturity. We will review our overall progress annually, set new goals, and identify specific milestones to focus on in order to achieve those goals.

Elementary
Specialized
Multicloud
Self-Service
Organizational
Train & Transform

The people, teams, and structure involved in designing, implementing, securing, supporting, and utilizing public cloud services

Governance
Mitigate Risks

The set of principles, policies, standards, processes, and guidelines that enables IT to successfully leverage public cloud services to meet business goals

Architecture
Multicloud Foundations

The tactical and strategic architectural work that enable organizations to consume public cloud services efficiently and securely

Provider Brokerage
Risk-Based Management

The act of evaluating, selecting, negotiating, and managing public cloud service provider relationships

Cloud Operations
Multicloud Management

The ability to efficiently manage and operate in a controllable manner within public cloud environments

Current Milestones In Progress
75%

Create Cloud Engineering Team
Primary responsibilities include research, implementation, and management of all UCF IT PaaS and IaaS public cloud services. They will also serve as a consultation resource for other technical areas and customers. Offload non-cloud related duties as resources are made available.

75%

Train and Transform the Organization
Define individual and department cloud training and development plans across the organization that focus on versatility, enablement, collaboration, orchestration, customer services, complex problem solving, idea generation, and cross-functional thinking. Evangelize the benefits of cloud computing to staff and customers across the university.

50%

Implement Orchestration to Standardize Services and Processes
Select and implement a strategic orchestration solution across all public clouds. Utilize DevOps best practices for automated governance and operations functions. Leverage toil automation to reduce the amount of manual and repetitive tasks.

75%

Establish a Dedicated Cloud Financial Analyst for Cost Management
Implement a comprehensive FinOps practice to mature our financial management capabilities including cost transparency with reporting and forecasting, right-sizing through performance tracking, cloud rate and usage optimization, and organizational alignment based on policy and governance.

75%

Implement Multicloud Network and Identity Architecture
Upgrade and strategically transform existing WAN architecture and design to support a hub/cloud exchange for future multi-cloud integrations. Establish dedicated connectivity to major cloud providers. Improve campus identity redundancy and develop a modern identity platform for dealing with federation, authentication, and authorization across cloud providers.

What We’ve Done

As our journey to the cloud continues, here’s just a few of the major achievements we’ve completed related to SaaS application delivery, operational improvements, service offerings, and strategic initiatives.

  • Canvas Learning Management System (CDL)
  • Panopto Video Lecture Capture (CDL)
  • ServiceNow Lifecycle & Incident Management
  • ProctorHub Assessment Authentication (CDL)
  • Azure Classic migration to Azure Resource Manager 
  • Regionally-redundant identity federation services in Azure
  • Dedicated connectivity between UCF and Azure
  • O365 Project Online for UCF IT project management
  • Materia interactive learning migration to AWS (CDL)

2014 - 2016

2017

  • Executive approval of Cloud First strategy
  • Introduction of Cloud Maturity Roadmap
  • Email services migration to O365 Exchange Online
  • O365 OneDrive for personal online file storage
  • O365 Power BI for cloud cost management
  • First major customer application in Azure IaaS
  • Duo Multi-Factor Authentication
  • O365 Advanced Threat Protection for enhanced email security
  • Azure DNS service availability
  • Azure Backup service availability
  • UCFMobile migration to Modo Labs Mobile Engagement & Communication
  • Canvas static content delivery migration to AWS CloudFront (CDL)
  • Obojobo learning modules migration to AWS (CDL)
  • Formation of UCF IT Cloud Engineering Group
  • Archival data retention migration from tape to cloud storage
  • Azure Site Recovery evaluation for disaster recovery
  • AWS Direct Agreement in place
  • O365 Teams for enterprise collaboration
  • SnapLogic Enterprise Integration Platform
  • Dedicated Azure connectivity upgrade from 100Mbps to 650Mbps

2018

2019

  • Azure DevOps for UCF IT application development
  • UCF IT Cloud Website online
  • UDOIT Canvas course accessibility scanning and remediation for faculty (CDL)
  • UCF IT appoints Cloud Architect
  • SCCM Cloud Management Gateway for client management
  • Low-cost Reserved and Burstable virtual machines
  • HIPAA-compliant file server availability in Azure
  • Azure SQL for managed cloud databases
  • UCF Here for student class attendance logging (CDL)
  • Live OS and database updates to regionally redundant identity services architecture
  • Web application hosting and development with Azure App Service
  • Rapid hybrid deployment of Citrix Cloud virtual desktops into Azure to support remote learning with UCF Apps
  • Secure, compliant, and scalable enterprise environment using AWS Control Tower to enable automated customer account creation
  • Natural language chatbot using Azure QnA Maker
  • Upgrade application and DNS load balancing for increased reliability, availability, and performance
  • Fully managed cloud file shares using Azure Files
  • Azure File Sync for hybrid file shares
  • Azure Ultra Disk storage for sub-millisecond latency, high IOPS, and consistent throughput
  • Azure MySQL for managed cloud databases
  • High Performance Computing orchestration and management using Azure CycleCloud 

2020

2021

  • Microsoft 365 Defender Suite for enterprise security detection, prevention, investigation, and response
  • Enterprise voice systems migration from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams
  • Apptio Cloudability for improved multi-cloud cost management
  • AWS Direct Connect for dedicated campus network connectivity
  • Office of Research datacenter migration to VMware on AWS
  • SailPoint SaaS for improved identity management, security, and governance 
  • Shibboleth SSO federation services migration to Azure
  • Azure Firewall Premium for advanced threat protection and malware prevention
  • College of Graduate Studies datacenter migration to Azure
  • Enterprise agreement for researcher access to Google Cloud
  • Azure ExpressRoute for dedicated campus network connectivity
  • Microsoft Defender for Cloud for advanced security posture management
  • Data and Analytics Reporting Ecosystem (DARE) centralized enterprise data lake and warehouse Azure environment

2022

2023

  • UCF main site migration to Pantheon SaaS website management platform
  • 400+ server enterprise datacenter migration to Azure

What’s Next

As our journey to the cloud continues, UCF IT will continue to research and adopt the latest technologies so that we can fulfill our mission to provide innovative, responsive, and reliable technology solutions for our customers. These are some of the enhancements and exciting new offerings we’re currently working on.

KnightShield environment within Azure Government Cloud for highly-restricted workloads and projects 

Azure Application Gateway for advanced, cloud-native load balancing

Migration of existing workloads from Azure VPN Gateway to Azure ExpressRoute 

Microsoft Intune for unified mobile device and endpoint management

Commvault Metallic SaaS for enterprise backup management and ransomware protection

Legacy ERP infrastructure migration to managed cloud provider for streamlined management and maintenance

Enhanced key vault services implementation for improved encryption management