Outsourcing Remote Access

I am here to talk to you today about outsourcing remote access.

We'll cover obtaining connectivity to and from your campus, should you not already have it, and then we will talk about outsourcing the remote access to your campus.

If you don't have campus connectivity as yet, you'll need to first establish a relationship with an Internet services provider. Examples of these are PSI, BBNPlanet, and MCI, although there are numerous others. You will also need a line from your campus to the provider. Typical speeds today are T1, T3, OC3, and so forth. We would not recommend that anyone start with less than a T1. Regarding the equipment you�ll need, you'll need to work with your information services provider as the equipment will be dependent on the technology that the ISP uses. There will be some additional details later in the CD about that equipment.

The cost for a T1 for Internet services is typically around $30,000 to $35,000 a year. Line costs depend on the distance. For example, in Washington, DC, it is approximately $5,000 a year on a multi-year agreement. For the equipment again work with the information service provider. One thing to be aware of, however, is that most of the ISPs are moving towards a usage-sensitive pricing. There is possible support available from the National Science Foundation. Again, information about that should be contained elsewhere in this CD.

Now let's turn to remote access. There has been a change in usage patterns. In California, for example, people are getting on the Internet and staying on so long that there have actually been telephone outages. In the old days, people would get on to a computer, read a little email, run a batch job, and get off. Today they get on and stay on for hours. A lot of universities have to face the decision of whether they are going to try to meet their users demand for services in-house or outsource.

Why outsource? Usually it is because a campus thinks that a third-party provider can provide a better service. Also the third party can usually provide the service more quickly than the university could do it. For example, on my own campus we estimated that it would have cost $1,000,000 to upgrade the modem pool to the level that it needed to be. In order to get approvals to spend that kind of money, it would have taken more than a year. And the third reason is so that we can achieve some cost sharing with our users. If the campus has a million dollars to spend, the faculty would most always rather see you spend it on providing better services to them and the students than investing in modems.

Equipment spending is on the rise for remote access. This graph was taken from the July 8, 1996 issue of Information Week and shows what is happening in corporate spending regarding remote access. The average spending per corporation in 1995 was $4.7 million. Eighty-five percent of it was spent on recurring costs, 15% was spent on hardware and software acquisition. In 1997 they are estimating that the average spending per company will be $8.5 million, with 77% of it going to recurring costs, and 23% going to acquisition. I have not found similar data for higher education, but I think it is safe to assume that our usage patterns are the same.

Last spring, in preparation for the Southern Computer Center Directors� Conference, I did a survey of members of the Southern Directors' discussion list. Five institutions responded: the University of Alabama, Birmingham; North Carolina State, Florida State, the University System of Georgia; and Florida Atlantic University. I also included the Memorandum of Understanding that Georgetown University had with a local ISP.

Last September I followed it up with a survey that was sent to the original five institutions, plus it also went to the CAUSE CIO discussion list. Seventeen institutions responded.

The results of that have been put together to show what makes the components of an RFP. One of the first things you need to do in the RFP is specify who your clients are. Typically, it is students, faculty, and staff. Occasionally an institution will ask that the service also serve alumni and friends of the university. Typically friends are defined as people in the surrounding community. You need to also specify the services provided; dial-up Internet access, and/or access to campus servers, whether or not you want the provider to provide electronic mail and personal web space.

You need to specify the protocols you want supported. TCP/IP over SLIP and PPP are a given. There are numerous providers that can offer this. There are other options also of IPX and Appletalk. Fewer providers are able to meet this requirement.

You should specify the client software you expect to be supported: Windows 95, Windows3.11, and Apple systems. Another good thing to specify is that you want easy installation of the software. The goal is that it should plug and play on 90% of the clients' systems.

You should also specify the application software that you want included with the distribution packet. The Trumpet Winsock, Netscape Navigator, a TN3270 or VTxxx emulator, a MAC dialer, FTP and Telnet are typical of these offerings.

You should specify also the speeds and band width. Most of the providers today are supporting 28.8, V.34. ISDN is typically within their future plans. You should also state your expectations on the timeliness of upgrades to newer, higher speeds.

You will want to specify also what percentage of busy signals is acceptable. Most of the institutions said that P.00 or P.01 grade of service, meaning 0 or 1%. One specified that 5% busy signals was okay.

Security and authentication are some things that are very important to address in your RFP. You need to establish with the vendor how they will verify eligible users. Recognize that you may have to make institutional data available to them in order to be able to do this. You should specify your expectations for protecting the university connection. There are also general responsibilities to work with one another and to work with your other Internet provider as well as organizations like CERT. The good news is that all who have outsourced report positive experiences with their remote access provider.

Non-disclosure: The vendor should be aware that the contract that you sign will require non-disclosure of information about your institution�s security and privacy. Again they could have data that could fall under the Buckley Amendment.

"Remote" remote access is very important. Or as it has come to be called "addressing the traveling scholar problem." Your provider should offer local access points in major cities. They should also offer 800 or 888 access. Be aware that if they do offer 800 access, that this is not a free service. Charges will be $0.10 to .12 a minute. However, you will receive a clearer line than you would off of a voice grade line.

Pricing: Will there be a start-up fee? If so, they range from $10.00 to $25.00. Usage time: Most vendors will offer you a menu of usage time. Unlimited time is typically just under $20. Frequently they will offer a package where you can get 60 hours a month for $12.00 to $13.00, plus a $0.95 per hour charge, for example. There is also the possibility that you could have off-peak unlimited usage between the hours of 1:00 AM and 6:00 AM

Billing: You need to specify to the vendor how you want billing to be performed, whether you want it to be to individuals, whether you want it to be to university departments, or whether you want to be able to subsidize the service; that is, partially billed to the individual and partially billed to the university. Specify how you want billing to occur � monthly, by term (semester or quarter), by academic year, or by calendar year.

A caution about subsidized accounts; be aware that a university-paid or subsidized account may be ruled as a taxable benefit to the individual if it is not applied to all individuals on the campus. Please check on your campus before you undertake this.

Client support is very important. You need to specify your expectations. Typically the operations are 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Typical customer service offerings are Mon.-Fri., 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM, Sat. and Sun. 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM They should offer helpdesk support and the access to it should be toll-free.

Marketing: You need to establish how, when, and where the new service will be marketed. You need to specify who is going to pay for the marketing, and one caution is to beware of a vendor trying to offer "too little, too soon" in order to get the service available to people. You need to decide if you want the services to be university branded. For example, at Georgetown we might call such a service "HoyaNet". The other thing is, the vendor needs to be aware that you will approve all use of university logos and trademarks.

Start of Services: You need to state your expectations. After a contract is signed, the shortest time to start up was four days; the longest was four months.

The duration of the contract typically in the survey was one to two years. One signed for as many as five years to get a better rate. Most of the contracts had an option for one-year extensions.

RFP Evaluation: Once you get the responses to your RFP, how do you evaluate them? You need to evaluate in all the categories listed above. You should consider requesting five to ten accounts for trial service. You need to view the provider as a partner interested in the institution's goals.

Implementation: You need to decide how the software will be distributed on the campus. Most frequently the providers offer it off of the World Wide Web, but you may want to provide it at your Helpdesk, through your campus computer reseller, or from the bookstore.

Issues around access to campus-only services, especially library services, have come to light recently. Some services require an IP address from the institution's domain to determine if a user is authorized to access a service. This is causing many of us to implement an authentication service which may also act as a firewall in order to validate who the users are coming in.

Can we sell this to our constituencies? They things that we hear are: "I'm paying "big bucks" to be here. Now you are telling me I have to pay 20 bucks a month to get connected to the network?" "But you've always provided it."; "Well, you've got to continue the 'vanilla' dialup at least." And the beat goes on.

If the institutional decision is "yes," you need to work with your advisory committees. You need to prepare data on cost and growth of modem usage. Acceptance also takes time. Most of us now accept our cable TV bill as a utility along with our gas and water. You also have to weigh against enhancing and maintaining wiring facilities and service on the campus for faculty, staff, and students in residence halls.

For more information, there is an article in the winter 1996 issue of CAUSE/EFFECT about outsourcing remote access. Several RFPs are available on the CAUSE web server, and the survey and the results, plus up-to-the-minute information outsourcing remote access is on my own homepage at Georgetown University.

Thank you very much.

About CREN

© CREN, 1999

Contact Us