The year in review

This year, we mapped out a strategic five-year plan in partnership with our stakeholders. Together, we looked back at our history of successful collaborations, and looked forward to chart a clear, strong and agile course for our future.

The result? A renewed BCNET.

“We made great strides in our ongoing efforts to build on the strength of members’ deep and strong sense of community and collaborations to grow and evolve.”

Bala Kathirisan

President & CEO

Message from the President

I’m pleased to report that 2017 was another remarkably successful year. We made great strides in our ongoing efforts to build on the strength of members’ deep and strong sense of community and collaborations to grow and evolve.

We developed a new five-year strategic roadmap as part of our commitment to evolve BCNET and provide continuous value to our members. Through a facilitated process, we consulted with the Board of Directors, members and key stakeholders to gather a broad range of input. The feedback we received served to renew our vision and mission, pinpoint key strategies and create a five-year strategic roadmap. Together, we defined three key strategic areas of focus: member services, stakeholder relations and the BCNET organization. Our future activities will be tightly aligned with these areas to enable us to be an even more valuable, responsive and resilient organization.

As we continued to expand our service offerings, our focus on core network services remained strong and unwavering. We worked collaboratively with our members and stakeholders to connect an additional 21 higher education sites to our Advanced Network. We also implemented 100-Gigabit upgrades to ensure that we stay at the forefront of technology innovation and support the needs of our research institutions.

I would like to thank our members for partnering with us to make 2017 a successful year and for the opportunity to work together and contribute to the advancement of education, research and innovation.

Bala Kathiresan
President & CEO

“We made great strides in our ongoing efforts to build on the strength of members’ deep and strong sense of community and collaborations to grow and evolve.”

Message from the President

Bala Kathiresan
President & CEO

“BCNET’s success is deeply rooted in our unique, collaborative approach to partnering and working with our community of members and stakeholders.”

Brian Mackay

Chair, Board of Directors

Message from the Chair

I am proud to present you the BCNET Annual Review that highlights our key achievements during what has been a remarkable year.

Collectively, we looked to the future for ways to grow BCNET and build on our history of innovation, collaboration and success. We consulted with the Board, members and stakeholders to renew our mission and vision, identify priorities and design a strategic plan that will guide us for the next five years.

BCNET’s success is deeply rooted in our unique, collaborative approach to partnering and working with our community of members and stakeholders. One outstanding example of the power of partnerships is our progress in connecting every public, post-secondary institution to the Advanced Network. This year, we connected a total of 21 new higher education member sites to the high-speed digital infrastructure. In all, the sector has 100 times more available bandwidth today.

Dozens of collaborations are also underway in the strategic sourcing of contracts for the sector. BCNET’s team of procurement experts delivered a broader and greater number of IT and general contracts, boosted savings and efficiencies by 67 per cent and offered exceptional expertise in procurement and vendor management.

I want to thank the dedicated team at BCNET, the Board of Directors, the Ministry of Advanced Education and our industry partners for making this past year a great success.

Brian Mackay
Chair, BCNET Board of Directors

“BCNET’s success is deeply rooted in our unique, collaborative approach to partnering and working with our community of members and stakeholders.”

Message from the Chair

I am proud to present you the BCNET Annual Review that highlights our key achievements during what has been a remarkable year.

I want to thank the dedicated team at BCNET, the Board of Directors, the Ministry of Advanced Education and our industry partners for making this past year a great success.

Brian Mackay
Chair, BCNET Board of Directors

Our purpose

Our purpose is to use the power of collaboration to deliver exceptional service value to our members.

We deliver exceptional value to members

We aim to drive down costs, maximize efficiencies, reduce service management duplication, and increase the negotiating power of B.C’s institutions.

We foster collaboration and community

We foster a strong community where members can actively engage with peers to discuss, share expertise, explore and develop innovative solutions.

We are built on the collective years of experience

We help to bring together individuals who have unique and valuable experiences from a diverse range of higher education institutions and domains.

We help members leverage the Advanced Network

We support members in ways to leverage the Advanced Network for institutional access to data, technology computing resources and shared services.

Collaborating to shape our future

One of our key accomplishments in 2017 was the new BCNET five-year strategic plan.

In the fall of 2016, we embarked on a six-month consultative process with the BCNET Board of Directors, members and external stakeholders. The goal was to create a new, five-year strategic roadmap.

Their invaluable input not only guided our strategic planning, it helped us renew our mission and vision. From member feedback, we created a roadmap that outlines three key strategies to shape our growth, as well as areas of focus, key initiatives and desired outcomes. Our strong and agile plan reflects our members’ needs and ensures BCNET will remain effective and adaptable as we evolve and grow in a landscape of constant change.

Our Strategic Roadmap 2017–2022

Our mission

To deliver exceptional value to our members by leveraging our advanced network, fostering collaboration, and building on our expertise

Our vision

To be recognized as a global leader in providing innovative solutions to support world-class research and education

Our 3 areas of strategic focus and 9 key initiatives

Member Services

Connect all higher education institutions and improve research network planning

Provide access to knowledge and skills

Enhance education/ information technology and administrative systems support

Stakeholder Relations

Create and implement communications and stakeholder engagement strategy

Identify future service directions

Influence provincial and national research and education sectors

BCNET Organization

Renew governance structure and processes

Develop and implement organizational growth strategy

Demonstrate services transparency and accountability

A results-based action plan

Activities

Outcomes

Metrics/Indicators

We continued to focus on connecting every higher education member institution in B.C.

We advanced our signature project, the Integrated Network Solution, a plan to connect every public, post-secondary institution in B.C. to the Advanced Network.

In this era of digital transformation at higher education institutions, connecting to the BCNET Advanced Network keeps our province’s colleges, research universities and institutes competitive. Our high-performance network infrastructure boosts access to the data and technology that advance the strategic mandates of teaching, learning and research, and is an efficient way to deliver shared IT solutions.

The BCNET Integrated Network Solution Project began in 2013. By December 2018, it is anticipated that 100 per cent of public, post-secondary institutions will be connected to the BCNET Advanced Network. In 2017, we celebrated connecting five campus sites of the Justice Institute of BC, three campus sites of Douglas College and seven sites of Okanagan College.

We rolled out a number of new technology services in cooperation with members

We build innovative partnerships to offer new distributed solutions for information and educational technology services.

We partnered with members to expand EduCloud

Launched in 2015, EduCloud Server, a virtual data centre service, saw early success with 88 per cent of members signing up for the service. This year, we consulted with members on ways to enhance and optimize EduCloud.

A technical advisory committee of users came together in a forum to discuss their needs, and create a strategic roadmap to prioritize service improvements. The committee agreed that the top priority was the need to safeguard data away from the flood and earthquake zones. They recommended geographically diversifying EduCloud services as well as adding a new backup service.

We investigated options to expand EduCloud to meet user demand. By partnering with the Ministry of Advanced Education and UBC, we were able to expand EduCloud services by using the existing designated sites of the Provincial Government’s Q9 Data Centre in Kamloops, and the UBC Data Centre in Vancouver. Our Advanced Network acts as a high-speed, cost-effective backbone that securely transports and quickly backs up data across the province.

The newly expanded EduCloud service offers secure, geographically dispersed production and backup computing capacity to institutions. This geographical diversity provides critical functionality for institutions located on Vancouver Island and in the Lower Mainland, distributes workloads away from their primary data centres, protects against natural disasters and reduces operational risk and IT costs.

We launched four new services for the Shared Systems and Technology portfolio

Working in partnership with BCcampus, this year we moved Moodle production and operations to BCNET.

The shared service is a secure, highly available Moodle environment that offers reliable EduCloud server infrastructure and functionality, simplifies system administration and minimizes costs, all in a robust and flexible environment.

Kaltura offers exciting new possibilities for teachers and learners

Thanks to a three-way alliance with BCNET, BCcampus and UBC, we launched Kaltura, a leading enterprise video platform. Kaltura is an affordable, EduCloud-hosted shared service that allows members to create their own CampusTube in a robust, stable and scalable environment.

We negotiated a new partnership with Desire2Learn to bring members competitive pricing.

We negotiated a new partnership with Desire2Learn to bring members competitive pricing and purchase incentives for the company’s Brightspace learning management solution.

Shared digital signage offers a unique, distributed approach to operate, manage and deliver a sector-wide digital signage solution.

We forged partnerships for a member-operated shared service that includes pre-negotiated licensing, infrastructure, hosting, administration, customer service and training support that makes digital display simple, easy and affordable.

We are governed by our member-elected Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is comprised of 23 directors with diverse backgrounds, knowledge, skills and expertise, as well as experience on other boards. Together they provide strategic oversight for BCNET.

BACK ROW

Mark Roman
Chief Information Officer
Simon Fraser University

Jonathan Butt
Manager, IT Services
College of the Rockies

Matt Milovick
Vice-President, Administration & Finance
Thompson Rivers University

Peter Kingston
Vice-President, Finance & Administration
Justice Institute of British Columbia

Dr. Jonathan Bagger
Director
TRIUMF

Jag Madan
Chief Information Officer
Langara College

Peter Smailes
Treasurer, Treasury
University of British Columbia
Secretary/Treasurer, BCNET Board of Directors

Dr. Norbert Haunerland
Associate Vice-President, Research
Simon Fraser University

MIDDLE ROW

Alan Davis
President & Vice-Chancellor
Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Gayle Gorrill
Vice President, Finance and Operations
University of Victoria

Bala Kathiresan
President & Chief Executive Officer
BCNET

Wency Lum
Chief Information Officer
University of Victoria

Ian McLeod
Chief Information Officer
Douglas College

Steve Grundy
Vice-President, Academic & Provost
Royal Roads University

FRONT ROW

Brian Mackay
Associate Vice President Digital Strategies and Chief Information Officer
Thompson Rivers University
Chair/BCNET Board of Directors

Anna Machaj
Former Chief Information Officer
Vancouver Island University

Stephen O’Connor
Chief Information Officer
Capilano University

Stephen Lamb
Former Chief Information Officer
British Columbia Institute of Technology

MISSING FROM PHOTO

Jennifer Burns
Chief Information Officer
University of British Columbia

Kevin Brewster
Assistant Deputy Minister & Executive Financial Officer
BC Ministry of Advanced Education

Greg Condon
Chief Information Officer
University of Northern British Columbia

Roy Daykin
Vice-President, Finance
Okanagan College

Gary Leier
Vice-President, College Services & Chief Financial Officer
Selkirk College

Our financial highlights

This year, BCNET generated a small surplus of $90,000 on revenues of $14 million, slightly ahead of budget. This was another year of growth with continued expansion in all areas of our operations, evidenced by a year-over-year increase in revenues of 19 per cent.

An overview of the year

The Advanced Network continues to be the backbone of our operations, and consumes 63 per cent of our financial resources. This year, we enhanced the Network by investing an additional $730,000 in fibre and network equipment. Sixty-eight per cent of our members now use the Advanced Network and have access to the shared services that run on the Network.

The Shared Services portfolio now accounts for 22 per cent of our operations (13 per cent in 2016), an increase of 90 per cent over last year. Much of this increase was due to the addition of BCNETSource, a two-year pilot project funded by the Ministry of Advanced Education that enhances our non-IT procurement services. We also added shared services to our catalogue, including the expansion of EduCloud, Moodle, Digital Signage, Desire2Learn and Kaltura.

BCNET relies largely on fees from its members to pay for the services we provide. Twenty-one per cent of our revenue is from grants from the federal and provincial governments. Most of this revenue is either for capital projects or one-time funding of specific operational initiatives.

BCNET maintains a healthy statement of financial position with a contingency fund of $1.15 million and operational reserves of $119,000. The balance of the $3.6 million in our reserves reflects the future amortization of unfunded tangible capital assets.

Annual Review 2017

Collaborating to shape the future

Building on our history of success

The year in review

“We made great strides in our ongoing efforts to build on the strength of members’ deep and strong sense of community and collaborations to grow and evolve.”

Bala Kathirisan

President & CEO

Message from the President

“We made great strides in our ongoing efforts to build on the strength of members’ deep and strong sense of community and collaborations to grow and evolve.”

Message from the President

“BCNET’s success is deeply rooted in our unique, collaborative approach to partnering and working with our community of members and stakeholders.”

Brian Mackay

Chair, Board of Directors

Message from the Chair

“BCNET’s success is deeply rooted in our unique, collaborative approach to partnering and working with our community of members and stakeholders.”

Message from the Chair

Our purpose

We deliver exceptional value to members

We foster collaboration and community

We are built on the collective years of experience

We help members leverage the Advanced Network

2017 highlights

Look what we accomplished together

Annual growth of aggregated savings from all services

We calculate savings by using the manufacturer’s suggested retail price when educational pricing is not publicly available.

Collaborating to shape our future

Our Strategic Roadmap 2017–2022

Our mission

Our vision

Our 3 areas of strategic focus and 9 key initiatives

A results-based action plan

Our services achievements

We continued to focus on connecting every higher education member institution in B.C.

We provided expertise in procurement, contract and vendor management

$92,000,000

Annual growth of aggregated savings from all services

We calculate savings by using the manufacturer’s suggested retail price when educational pricing is not publicly available.

We rolled out a number of new technology services in cooperation with members

We partnered with members to expand EduCloud

We launched four new services for the Shared Systems and Technology portfolio

We introduced a professional development and training service portfolio

We are governed by our member-elected Board of Directors

Our financial highlights

An overview of the year

Thank you to our members

CONNECT