Internet2 Kicks Off 2025 with a Major Cloud Scorecard Update
A Conversation with Sean O'Brien and Loren Malm
Internet2 has maintained its Cloud Scorecard service since the creation of a pilot in 2021, helping the research and higher education community weigh tough decisions as they learn about, compare, and select cloud solutions.
With the proliferation of applications and providers ready to compete in today's burgeoning cloud marketplace — completed Cloud Scorecards now number into the 80s — it's the perfect time for a relaunch that will find users examining the complex issues and ever-growing importance of the modern cloud.
A public preview of the latest release on the Internet2 Cloud Scorecard Finder website was made this past December [2024], launching new features that include dynamic selection criteria and options to explore multiple solutions side-by-side with easy-to-interpret views. Further enhancements are set to be added in the new year, expanding the platform's capabilities.
The development work and advances in the updated Cloud Scorecard offering reflect the community-based engagement Internet2 is known for. Here, CT gets together with Internet2 Associate VP Sean O'Brien, who leads Internet2's NET+ and cloud services programs, and Ball State University VP for IT and CIO Loren Malm, who serves on the Cloud Scorecard advisory committee. We ask them about the new Cloud Scorecard release and the development efforts behind it.
Mary Grush: There's a lot of "buzz" around the Cloud Scorecard updates and the new Cloud Scorecard Finder website. Sean, for some perspective, what was Internet2's original reason for building a cloud scorecard?
Sean O'Brien: During the early part of this decade, there was amazing growth in the utilization of cloud services at U.S. research and higher education (R&E) institutions. At Internet2, we wanted to leverage some of the cloud evaluation criteria that we look at for NET+ cloud services, and build on that. We wanted a way to scale some of the due diligence that NET+ does for select cloud solutions. So, we got a working group together to think about the two-dozen-or-so key questions we would want to ask every cloud service vendor who might be interested in working in the higher education market.
We wanted a place for higher education institutions to find the most important things they need to know about a cloud service — things like how it meets various compliance or regulatory standards, or how it integrates with existing services on a campus environment. That's where we started, back in 2021.
We wanted a place for higher education institutions to find the most important things they need to know about a cloud service.
Grush: Loren, what are some of the challenges higher education IT leaders face, finding and evaluating cloud solutions? How can the Cloud Scorecard Finder help?
Loren Malm: I think one of the drivers that has made the Cloud Scorecard Finder so appealing at higher education institutions for people in positions like mine — for CIOs — is that it's a way to work more easily with the dramatic increase in the number of vendors that are available to choose from. We need to understand what capabilities cloud services offer, as well as what their limitations are. The Cloud Scorecard Finder brings all the key information — particularly based on factors that we've identified as being the most important — to one place where campus technology leadership can, relatively quickly, do some sorting and identification of which vendors might be the most relevant for the things they are looking for.
Campus technology leadership can, relatively quickly, do some sorting and identification of which vendors might be the most relevant for the things they are looking for.