Last updated on November 14th, 2024 at 12:39pm
Universities face unique challenges in managing cloud environments as they grow their infrastructures to support research, teaching, and innovation. Issues such as high user turnover, centralized and decentralized funding models, and data orientation risks are common obstacles in CloudOps for higher education institutions.
In a recent EDUCAUSE Annual Conference session moderated by Kion, representatives from Northwestern University and Texas A&M University shared how they have tackled these challenges with Kion’s CloudOps platform to foster a culture of accountability, streamline operations, and improve efficiency.
Understanding the Challenges
With the expansion of cloud across various departments and teams, both Northwestern and Texas A&M found it challenging to control cloud spending, manage user permissions, and prevent account sprawl. These issues are common across higher education institutions where diverse users – from research to administrators – require cloud resources for their work. Without a cohesive approach, institutions risk overspending, exposing sensitive data, and facing inefficiencies in cloud management.
Matthew Rich, Cloud Engineering Manager, from Northwestern highlighted their initial struggles with cloud spending visibility. “Our central IT organization was sort of playing catch-up with the public cloud,” he noted. “If I needed to report to my leadership about how much we were spending, it would take me hours just to make those numbers make sense.” Like many universities, Northwestern needed a solution that would provide clear, real-time insights into cloud usage and spending across departments.
Similarly, Joseph Rafferty, Cloud Engineering Manager, from Texas A&M described their journey in creating a flexible, user-driven cloud environment while managing the risk of account sprawl and overprivileged access. “We wanted to attract customers (internal to the University) and give them the freedom to build and experiment without hard structures or guardrails in place,” he explained. But as their program grew, so did the need for more structured accountability to ensure that resources were used responsibly and efficiently.
Building Accountability
For both universities, Kion emerged as the ideal solution to address these CloudOps challenges and foster a culture of accountability among cloud users.
At Northwestern, Kion’s reporting and financial management tools allowed IT administrators to understand cloud spend better and communicate it more effectively with stakeholders. Rich explained that Kion provided “immediate value” by enabling his team to generate reports by use case, service, team, and department, which streamlined cost management. This increased visibility helped Northwestern establish accountability for cloud expenses, reducing unexpected costs and making it easier for users to understand the financial impact of their cloud activities.
Texas A&M used Kion to introduce a framework for shared accountability, allowing users to take ownership of their cloud resources without sacrificing security or compliance. Rafferty shared, “introducing this idea of shared accountability has been a huge advancement in the health of our service.” With Kion, Texas A&M’s cloud users became more aware of their roles and responsibilities, fostering a collaborative approach to resource management. He explained the importance of cloud visibility, saying,
“ If you tell your customer, go here to get this data, but then go over here to get that data, they’re just not going to. So an important part for this is to get the data in front of them in an unobtrusive way. ”
This approach has led to increased awareness and curiosity among users, with some even generating their own reports and identifying trends, further enhancing engagement and accountability across the university.
Both institutions implemented “cloud checkups,” a regular review process where IT teams meet with cloud account owners to discuss spending, resource allocation, and utilization. This initiative, supported by Kion’s capabilities, enabled Northwestern and Texas A&M to engage cloud users in conversations about their activities, making them more mindful of cost and resource use. Rafferty described how Kion has become a central communication tool for these efforts, saying
“ And we introduced Kion as this…communication tool for everybody to kind of circle around. It’s kind of become the water cooler of the cloud office. It’s something common that we all use…bringing it up in cloud check-ins, showing it to them…puts us in a position to start…building relationships with these cloud customers. ”
By fostering these connections, Texas A&M has been able to stay informed about trends and better support users, even as their cloud operations scale.
Automating Low-Level Tasks
One of the key benefits of Kion’s platform for both universities has been its automation capabilities, which have significantly reduced time spent on repetitive, low-level tasks. Automation is critical for scaling cloud operations, especially in environments with a large user base like higher education.
Dan Landerman, Senior Cloud Engineer, for Northwestern described how Kion’s automation tools allowed his team to streamline their onboarding process. “We do all of our Kion onboarding now through Azure runbooks,” he shared. This automation capability eliminated the need for manual data entry, ensuring that no details were missed and saving valuable time that IT staff could allocate to more strategic initiatives.
Texas A&M’s cloud engineering team also embraced automation to improve agility and responsiveness. According to Rafferty, they started as a “modernization and automation team” with a focus on building account provisioning tools through automation. By automating these workflows with Kion, Texas A&M was able to scale their cloud services without additional manual oversight, empowering their team to handle user demands more effectively.
Addressing Overprivileged Access and Account Sprawl
Managing cloud accounts and access permissions is a complex challenge in higher education, where multiple users require varying levels of access. Without careful oversight, this can lead to security risks and operational inefficiencies due to overprivileged access and account sprawl without baseline policies.
Kion provided Northwestern and Texas A&M with a solution to define and enforce baseline policies for cloud account setup and access management. By establishing these baselines, both universities ensured that users had the appropriate permissions, minimizing the risk of security vulnerabilities associated with overprivileged access. Rich emphasized the importance of these policies, noting that Kion allowed Northwestern to report on cloud use in a more granular way, providing insights by service, team, and department.
Texas A&M’s approach also benefited from Kion’s access management features, which allowed them to govern account sprawl while maintaining flexibility for users. By automating account provisioning and managing permissions at scale, Texas A&M was able to achieve a balance between user autonomy and security.
Preparing for the Future
As both institutions continue to refine their cloud strategies, they are now focusing on enhancing compliance and security within their CloudOps frameworks. Compliance with regulatory standards and internal security policies is a growing concern for higher education institutions, especially as they expand their cloud environments.
Rich noted that Northwestern is starting to leverage Kion’s compliance tools, which help streamline adherence to regulatory requirements. “We’re starting to get into the compliance tools that Kion offers,” he shared, emphasizing how these features will support Northwestern’s evolving CloudOps needs.
Reflecting on the partnership with Kion, Rafferty highlighted the collaborative approach, saying
“ ...the relationship that both Northwestern and my team have with Kion has been one that they listen to feedback and it’s not like any other tool that we’ve used in the past where it’s like take it or leave it…they are very interested in making this a product that is actually usable across our various teams. ”
Rafferty added, “We have a lot of researchers that are still cloud skeptics…so expanding the same kind of visibility and automation…is a focus of ours right now,” further underscoring Texas A&M’s commitment to providing a cohesive CloudOps experience across multiple cloud environments.
Final Thoughts
The experiences of Northwestern University and Texas A&M University illustrate the impact Kion has on improving CloudOps for higher education institutions. By addressing critical challenges such as uncontrolled cloud spend, account sprawl, overprivileged access, and time wasted on low-level tasks, Kion has empowered these universities to create a more accountable, efficient, and secure cloud environment.
With an impressive suite of tools for FinOps reporting, automation, identity and access management, and compliance, Kion has enabled Northwestern and Texas A&M to establish a culture of accountability among their cloud users. As they continue to navigate the challenges of cloud operations, these universities are setting a new standard for efficient and effective CloudOps in the higher education community.
