The network is the computer - new role for JANET

One of many important and succinct things that John Naughton says is his new book 'From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg' is 'the network is the computer'. I've not heard anyone call an iPad a 'dumb terminal' but that's what I had on my desk twenty something years ago, and that's what I'm using to write this post. OK so it's not so dumb, it's certainly prettier, better with pictures and music too, but it ain't that brainy.

I went to the first Advisory Board for the new JANET (UK) Brokerage this week. This is where some of the most important action is going to be. Now the cloud is real. It turns out that our staff and students didn't need to be told it was Bring Your Own Device to work day. We need to work out how to connect them from these devices to the stuff they need, and the stuff usually won't be on our campus.

JANET's job is to connect our people from wherever they happen to be to the resources they need, even if they are in a remote village with a grotty ADSL link (which I am). That's a challenge - a global one. But we want them to do much more to catalyse the cloudward shift. The new framework agreement for managed Data Centre and co-lo services is a start. Next, a co-ordinated discussion with Microsoft to help us realise the huge potential of their Office365 offering. This is the kind of help we are going to need to enable us to work with these suppliers in entirely new ways. Exciting for both sides of the relationship and plenty of space for JANET in the middle!