The ASU central IT team focused on moving operational workloads from on-premises service offerings to AWS. Learn how in just six months the ASU UTO engineering team moved 65% of enterprise back office services to AWS.

1. July 10-11, 2019
The Conference Center,

2. Migration of Enterprise
Services to AWS
Jess Evans, Ph.D. – Chief Operating and Digital Transformation Officer
Nate Wilken – Senior Director and Enterprise Systems Architect

3. Welcome
Opening Act
• About ASU
• UTO Snap Shot
The ASU Story
• Motivation
• False Starts
• North Star
• Journey
• Outcomes
Look ahead
• Horizon

4. Ahead of Carnegie Mellon, Northeastern,
Harvard, Duke, Georgia Tech, Purdue,
Cornell, USC, UT-Austin, and Yale
4 Years in a Row!

5. “NEW AMERICAN UNIVERSITY” CHARTER:
NOTABLE COLLABORATIONS:
ONE UNIVERISTY / MANY PLACES:
BY THE NUMBERS:
RECENT RECOGNITION:
§ Metropolitan Phoenix AZ (5 Campuses), Washington, D.C.,
Havasu City, AZ, Santa Monica, CA, and Global Locations
§ 115K Students (40K Online), ~ 86% Freshman Retention!
§ 15K Employees (3,600 Faculty)
§ 19K Graduates
§ $604M Annual Research Expenditures
“Top 1% of world’s prestigious universities” - Times Higher Education
“#5 in graduation employability” -Wall Street Journal
“#1 chosen by international students” –Institute of International Education
§ Starbucks College Achievement Plan (2014)
§ Mayo Clinic Alliance (2016)
§ Adidas, ASU Global Sports Alliance (2017)
§ Uber, Driving Toward Opportunity (2018)
§ Amazon Web Services (2018)

6. Eight design aspirations guide ASU’s ongoing evolution as a New American
University. ASU integrates these institutional objectives in innovative ways to
demonstrate excellence, access and impact.
Leverage Our Place
ASU embraces its cultural,
socioeconomic and physical setting.
Transform Society
ASU catalyzes social change by
being connected to social needs.
Value Entrepreneurship
ASU uses its knowledge and
encourages innovation.
Conduct Use-Inspired Research
ASU research has purpose and
impact.
Enable Student Success
ASU is committed to the success of each unique student.
Fuse Intellectual Disciplines
ASU creates knowledge by transcending academic
disciplines.
Be Socially Embedded
ASU connects with communities through mutually
beneficial partnerships.
Engage Globally
ASU engages with people and issues locally, nationally
and internationally.

7. UTO Mission
The University Technology Office embraces its role as
both an enabler and catalyst for advancing the vision
and work of the New American University. We are a
values-driven organization. Our commitments are
outlined in our positive core and reflected in all the work
we do in pursuit of operational excellence, the
experience and delight of our community, and our
strategic and innovative initiatives. University Technology Office
620 Full & Part Time
100 Students
720 Total Employees
$109M Annual Budget

8. Our ASU UTO Story
• Motivation
• False Starts
• North Star
• Journey
• Outcomes

9. Motivation
• ASU has grown exponentially over the
last six years
• Funding sources continue to fluctuate
• Traditional IT operational processes*
are not sustainable with massive
growth
• Physical space challenges on campus
• Budget restrictions
* Waterfall projects, data center build outs, hands on rack and stack, etc.

10. Solution
Move to the Cloud

11. False Start
Limited Leadership
Not all executive IT leaders where on the same page.
Too many clouds
With several teams working on moving services to
multiple clouds, our people were maxed out and not
gaining the efficiencies UTO was looking to gain.
Culture
The collective view of cloud transition work was not
embraced by all.
Executive Discord
Without a north star there were diverging paths.

12. North Star
Leadership Alignment
AWS-First, not AWS-Only
Culture Correction
Executive Cohesion

13. Journey: Cloud Acceleration
Strategy
• Focus on momentum; avoid ocean-boiling
• Lean and agile; product-focused
• Cross-functional autonomous teams
• Infrastructure as code
• CI/CD: automation and orchestration
• Shift left: compliance, finance, QA, APM
• One-time budget allocation
• Continuous workforce development
Principles
Manage Risk
Reduce
Bottlenecks
Reduce
cognitive
load
Reduce
Technical
Debt
Mission
alignment
Enable
Underutilized
Talent

14. Journey: Cloud Acceleration
Cloud Objectives
• Increase speed of access to technology
• Reduce delivery time to the business
• Leverage our skills and creativity more
effectively
• Reduce risk
• Reduce failures
• Reduce capital costs
Dedicated, Prioritized, Co-Located Team
Development (6)
Platform
Security
(4)
Finance
(1)
Platform
Engineering
(5)
Agile
Coach (2)
Platform
Administration
(5)
Compliance
(1)

15. Journey: Cloud Acceleration
Key Targets
• Readiness baseline; team kick-off
• Publish shared lexicon
• Identify initial proof points
• Compliance rubric MVP
• Product map
• Resource tagging standards
• Short-term spending plan
• KPIs
Key Enablers

16. Journey: Cloud Acceleration
Migration Path
• Inventory
• Identify landing zone
• Select migration strategy
• Pick low-hanging fruit
• Productize MVP
• Capture product backlog items
Cost Optimization
• Phase I: Volume discount agreement
• Phase II: Reserved instances/capacity
• Phase III: Right-sizing analysis
• Phase IV: Lights-out

17. Journey: Cloud Acceleration
Workstreams
• Strategy development
• Back-Office migration
• Compliance automation
• Budget and finance
• Methodology
• Customer engagement
• Net-New products

18. Outcomes
Quantitative
84 AWS accounts
(45 UTO)
240,000 instance hours per month
(335 Linux and Windows instances):
~50% of Cost
367 automated
pipelines (“robots”)
30TB of backups
moved to AWS

19. Outcomes
Qualitative:
• Dozens of new non Amazon EC2 systems have been engineered natively in AWS
• All provisioned infrastructure and configuration is managed in a code repository
• Infrastructure provisioning and configuration is orchestrated and automated
• Infrastructure changes are code reviewed
• Resources are tagged and attributable to the product they deliver
• Secure secrets management
• Robust and auditable logging
• Staff have significantly up-skilled and engage more with UTO partners

20. Horizon
• Scaled agile and DevSecOps culture
• Enterprise architecture
• Expanded self-service
• Automated incident response
• Application CI/CD
• Comprehensive CMDB

21. Thank you…
The End