The Implementation Of Digital Innovation

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

This journal is the second in a series of journals and reports and follows on from Journal 1 (Morrell 2012) which examined the adoption of innovative technologies and processes at Logan City Council, a Queensland government department. This Journal will describe the implementation aspects of the most significant digital innovation identified in Journal 1, being the implementation of the communications link between the primary and (new) secondary data centres.

As there are many communications options available, careful feasibility analysis was required to determine which of the currently utilised communications technologies should be employed, or whether a new technology (currently unused by Council) was required.

With the ever reducing budgets due to public sector reforms, and that the establishment of a second data centre was to be a long term investment, the chosen option must provide the best return on investment (ROI) and the lowest overall total cost of ownership (TCO).

Dark Fibre was determined by Council to be the best choice to link the data centres, and this Journal will analyse this option and its effect on the possible benefits in cost and future systems/process integration.

Contents

Introduction

A review of the digital innovation in the organization is being discussed in a progressive series of journals and reports. Journal 1 (Morrell 2012) discussed how the organization absorbed the innovation in terms of processes, procedures, policies and technologies and identified any issues and problems encountered. This journal follows on from the initial discussion and will describe the implementation aspects of digital innovation in the organization, and will cover following:

1. Analysis and justifications of the solutions to the problems identified in Journal 1 through the innovative processes or/and innovative digital information system technologies or a combination;

2. Cost benefit, integration, and implementation analyses for the above;

The organization selected for the digital innovation review is Logan City Council (‘Council’). Logan City Council follows a 3 year strategic plan (Logan City Council 2010) for the identification and implementation of technologies and processes, both innovative and mundane.

Constraints

This document has the following constraints:

Journal 2 must follow on from Journal 1;

The body of this Journal (Sections 2 and 3) is limited to a maximum of 700-750 words. Due to this constraint, this Journal focusses on the analysis of the most significant problem and solution identified in Journal 1, being the data centre connectivity.

Implementation Analysis

This section will analyse the problem, available options and the solution chosen.

Distributed Hybrid Cloud

The distributed hybrid cloud model is a combination of a privately managed cloud and cloud based services provided by a third party. In alignment with the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) to maintain business continuity in the event of a disaster (Logan City Council 2012), a second data centre (co-location) service was commissioned at a remote location. The problem encountered was not the choice of data centre model, but how to manage the transmission of so much data across remote sites.

Problem

Data centre site connectivity – What service will provide the highest capacity transmission and scalability with the best ROI?

Options

The following connectivity options were available for consideration (Lecinski & Basher 2012).

Internet links;

Business grade MAN/WAN links;

Carrier supplied and managed fibre optic links;

Carrier supplied unmanaged fibre optic links (Dark Fibre);

Satellite point to point services;

Solution

The chosen solution was to use a Dark Fibre link. Dark Fibre (‘DF’) is a term used to describe the unmanaged optical fibre cores used for securely transmitting data from one point to another (Pipe Networks n.d.). Dark Fibre provides direct connectivity between the data centre sites without having to traverse the normal Carrier network.

A typical Dark Fibre comparison is illustrated below from Pipe Networks who is one of the largest Carriers for these services in Australia.

Figure : Comparison of Carrier services

Analysis

The use of Dark Fibre as the site connection medium is a good choice as it provides high bandwidth and scalability, with the limitations normally being the cost of the end connection devices to manage the higher throughput, up to around 450Gbps. It also provides effective end-to-end security between locations.

The other options mentioned in Section 2.1.2 were disregarded due to limited bandwidth constraints (affecting integration) or high costs. Dark Fibre provides the highest ROI of any option in this particular situation.

Benefits Realisation

The implementation of any new product or service should come with clear benefits that will be realised in a predefined time. Understanding what benefits will be achieved helps with understanding the true return on the investment (ROI).

Cost benefits

This section outlines some of the cost benefits achieved with the chosen implementations.

The Dark Fibre Telecommunications Carrier supplies the optical fibre cores but the Client must provide and manage their own end connection devices for the data transmission. The Client can choose to ‘light up’ as many or few fibre cores as it chooses and only be charged for the cores in use (within contracted limitations).

The Carrier must still provide strong SLAs for the integrity of the link, but as the data transmission is not managed by the Carrier, it significantly reduces the ongoing optical fibre carriage costs.

Part of the implementation contract was that the ‘new build’ portion of the link was for a fixed price which meant that there would be no additional charges incurred if the Carrier encountered delays or problems while extending their fibre network.

Integration

One of the primary drivers for the establishment of a secondary data centre is for the integration of services and to be able to provide a fully redundant service in the event of a disaster affecting the serviceability of the primary service centre. For example:

To make effective use of the link bandwidth, the Core Backbone Network (BN) had to be upgraded to support a 10Gbps internally at the primary data centre. This then provided a 10Gbps network from a server/appliance in the primary data centre all of the way through to a server/appliance in the secondary data centre.

With the construction of a diverse 10Gbps network, a benefit was the integration with VMware for DR site recovery. The Virtual Machines in the primary data centre could now be dynamically redistributed across hosts and across sites.

Layer 3 switching was extended through to the secondary data centre so that the DR site could be used as a standalone site, or could provide redundancy for switching services if the primary data centre lost its layer 3 switching services.

Implementation

The implementation of the dark fibre link required the new build of approximately 2.5Km from the nearest existing trunk to the Council building, which required numerous surveys and civil works applications. It also required the upgrade to the existing backbone network to fully support 10Gbps throughout the distributed network.

Components of the implementation and upgrades were beyond the skill or capacity of the Council staff which then relied upon qualified vendors and contractors to perform this specialised work.

Conclusion

With the costs of traditional business grade MAN/WAN carrier services such as Telstra’s E-line, or point-to-point satellite services being so high and other technologies not providing effective bandwidth or security, the use of Dark Fibre for a persistent connection between remote sites if highly effective, scalable

As the secondary data centre is a long term strategy, the ongoing costs is a driving factor for providing a high return on investment (ROI) and a low overall total cost of ownership (TCO). It also provides a significant contribution to the future integration of services in the long term as the secondary data centre evolves from a purely DR site to becoming a fully integrated distributed (active-active) data centre model.