OUCS wins £1.2million for cloud project - VIDaaS[

It was announced today that OUCS has won funding of £1.2million to develop the VIDaaS Project - Virtual Infrastructure with Database as a Service. This Project will provide a local virtual infrastructure (VI) which will interface with a national Higher Education VI - or 'cloud' - to enable the sharing of services across the whole HE sector. As a result there will be substantial cost savings through economies of scale. The virtual infrastructure will host a self-service 'Database as a Service' (DaaS) system which will help improve the efficiency of UK Higher Education research. Members of the team are shown above.

A revised Government IT Strategy was published on Wednesday 30 March 2011.

One quarter of the document (Part 2) is focused on 'Creating a common ICT infrastructure', within which the cloud features strongly as well as 'common technology standards' and 'interoperability enabled by open standards'. There is also a new proposed governance structure (Part 4).

Does any of this have relevance to Higher Education IT Strategy do you think?

Today, JISC's Managed Research Data programme completes, as does our SUDAMIH project.

I attended the UCISA conference last week. The UCISA web site has the conference information and most of the talks have their slides linked as PDFs now. The themes were:

Day One: Know your business
Day Two AM: Know your numbers
Day Two PM: Strive to be trusted/empower the team
Day Three: See over the horizon

Tweeting was rife, you can find an archive of them on twapper keeper and a summary of them on Summarizr (Powered by Eduserv). I found that the tweeting really added value.



As a taster I will mention just one thought provoking talk, Paul Golding, CEO of Wireless Wanders, on current and future trends in mobile.

Mobile is "everyware". 1.2billion mobiles sold annually. >90% of world has mobile access. In 59 countries there are more mobiles than people. 6 trillion text messages sent in a year. Each teenager sends or receives on average 3339 text messages a month. That's about 14 hours.

First internet enabled phone came out in 1999, and since then there's been a convergence of web 2.0 and Internet centric mobile devices with a 100 times increase in processing power.

The fastest growing sector in app store is business applications,especially for tablets. They are not an offshoot of a PC, but a mobile phone. There's an increasing transition from utility to experience. This will lead to escaping the PC ( when current dependence on iTunes goes). Some people may grow up without ever needing a PC, and it will change their experience of computing, especially as data moves more into the cloud. For example, they will not have concept of folder.

Virtual, augmented reality is also a trend to watch, This combines the physical world and the web world. A tipping point for virtual reality will be tablets now they have cameras. There is an increasing number of sophisticated sensors being developed, which will augment the web experience. Small body sensors can already can detect and measure 20 different things. Sensors in your car can already detect tyre pressures. This leads to the concept of the Internet of Things. Everything in our lives will be accessible via the Internet.

The enablers for this are Moore's law, and the every increasing processing power available, small bluetooth devices which will fit in a post-it note, 4G LTE networks and Web technologies. Combine all of this with the power of cloud and sensor grids and a whole new type of application becomes possible.

The right time web is almost here, giving the right information at the right time to the right person.

The World Wide Research Book is launched

Last Wednesday, at a lively event at the Oxford Internet Institute, the World Wide Research book was launched, with a number of fascinating and provocative presentations.

In his closing address, Dr James Martin (who founded the James Martin 21st Century School, now rebranded as the Oxford Martin School) urged people to read the book and commented that ‘it is seminal in its field’. It was Dr Martin’s investment in the School that enabled the e-Horizons Project to be created, from which the book emerged – and William Dutton, my co-editor, and I are grateful for his invaluable support. The launch agenda lists the speakers and panel members. There are some photo highlights and more information is available about the e-Horizons Project.

See my previous blog entries for further information about the book and the launch event.

World Wide Research Book Launch 22 September

Wednesday 22 September 2010 16:00 – 18:00

Location: Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, 1 St Giles Oxford

If you would like to join us: Email your name and affiliation to events@oii.ox.ac.uk or telephone +44 (0)1865 287209

This event is an occasion to mark the publication by MIT Press of World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities, edited by Bill Dutton and me. This new book explores how advances in ICTs are transforming the way scholarly research is conducted across all disciplines, offering a comprehensive and accessible view of the use of these new approaches to research and their ethical, legal and institutional implications. Where has work in this area made the greatest strides, and what areas are in the greatest need of further research?

16:00 Opening and Introduction

The Editors: Bill Dutton and Paul Jeffreys

16:10-50 Keynote

David De Roure, Professor of eResearch, Oxford e-Research Centre; National Strategic Director for Digital Social Research

16:50-17:30 Panel Discussion on Directions for the Field

• Graham Crow, Professor of Sociology, University of Southampton; Deputy Director of the UK’s National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM)
• Jim Davies, Professor of Software Engineering, Director, Software Engineering Programme, and Fellow, Kellogg College
• Eric T. Meyer, Research Fellow, OII
• Ralph Schroeder, Senior Research Fellow and Director of Research at the OII

17:30-17:55 Open Discussion on World Wide Research

17:55-18:00 Closing Remarks

Just published: 'World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities'.

I am delighted to announce the publication of 'World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities'. A collaboration, formed through the e-Horizons Project, with Professor William Dutton (Director of the Oxford Internet Institute). The book will be launched on Wednesday 22 September 2010 in Oxford.

Book details:

W.H.Dutton and P.Jeffreys (eds) World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press and Amazon.