Recalculating Our Route Through A Changing Landscape:

A Framework for Updating the Internet2 Strategic Plan for 2010

The Internet2 Council Officers (ICO)

DRAFT
ICO Version 2.0 – May 25, 2010

Vision

In July 2008, Internet2 community leaders presented to the Internet2 Board of Trustees a
comprehensive strategic plan1 to guide the organization and align priorities for the years ahead.
The Internet2 community envisioned this as a living document, demonstrating
“our commitment to continuous innovation and sustained leadership, … enabling us to
achieve together what we can only imagine separately” (p. 1).
With the emergence of unprecedented domestic and global economic and political changes that
affect each of the Internet2 member institutions and the Internet2 community as a whole, we
believe that now is the time to take bold action together to embrace these changes through strong
and visible leadership. We believe that we also need to embrace these changes with an equally
visible commitment to strengthen Internet2’s core mission in support of the Research and
Education (R&E) community
“to ensure that scholars and researchers have access to the advanced networks, tools and
support required for the next generation of collaborative discovery and innovation and for
effectively preparing the next generation of innovators, our students” (p. 1).
This bold action requires:
• Initiatives in computing “above the campus,” including cloud computing and shared
resources;
• Participating in and shaping federal programs and policies that link the R&E community
with other community anchor institutions and the general public;
• Playing an ever stronger role in the international networking community, recognizing that
Internet2 member institutions have increasing global needs and that strong U.S.
leadership is in the best interest of the Internet2 community;
• Enabling and effectively promoting stronger and more synergistic, innovative and
collaborative dialogue between academia, industry, and government;
• Rearticulating Internet2’s “value proposition” so that Internet2 recognizes, engages, and
builds each of our constituencies in a strategic fashion; and
• Building on Internet2’s most valuable assets -- the continuous innovation and creativity
of the R&E community – to ensure the likely success of each of these initiatives.
This action requires changes to the Internet2 strategic plan; the goal of this document is to
provide a framework for guiding those changes. It is critical that these changes be discussed and
shaped by the Internet2 community, led by our advisory councils and other governance.


























































1
A Strategic Plan for the Internet2 Community: 2008-2013, 2008.
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Background
The current strategic plan has enabled Internet2 to refocus our research mission, while also
evolving Internet2’s portfolio of network services. The plan has also provided a pathway for
substantial, visible investments in Internet2’s middleware and collaboration tools.

In 2010, as Internet2 continues on the path envisioned in the strategic plan, new opportunities and
a number of synergistic efforts have emerged. Presented by emerging technologies, rapid changes
in the environment supporting the U.S. R&E Community, and other important changes within the
Internet2 organization (e.g. changes within our own leadership) we must now evolve and adapt
our strategic directions.

There are three major influences that motivate our call for changes in Internet2’s strategic plan:

1. The federal landscape for science, research, and telecommunications under the Obama
Administration is starkly different in 2010 than in 2008. Not only do we see a dramatic
increase in attention by federal policymakers on advanced networking itself but there is also a
renewed belief that public and non-profit work is part of a national solution set. A key
question is: can the Internet2 community afford not to be a prominent national
participant?
At the same time, both states and Internet2 member institutions face serious and
unprecedented financial challenges. In parallel, support for basic science in Washington D.C.
has expanded, spending programs (including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(ARRA) and the Affordable [Health] Care Act) carry tremendous debt load which may
inhibit the extent to which support for basic research can be expanded in the future.

2. The Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan2 advocates a central

role for the R&E networking community in our nation’s rapidly evolving networking
environment, a notion strongly reinforced within the ARRA’s broadband funding initiatives3.
In its plan, the FCC also envisions a large and diverse community that extends far beyond the
traditional R&E boundaries. Similarly, the Department of Commerce’s National
Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Broadband Technologies
Opportunity Program (BTOP) explicitly requires that competitive advanced networks will
serve such a community. To state the opportunity and dilemma as one: the federal
government has shown strong support for the R&E community, but in ways that
require us to broaden Internet2’s own view of our membership.
For some time, members of the Internet2 community have individually and collectively been
engaged in reaching out to such a broader community, connecting K-12, rural and community
hospitals, and a host of other non-higher education institutions. But if Internet2 is to play a
national leadership role as a community, it must accelerate and expand our engagement of
these new community anchor institutions.
To be sure, this shift is of great value to the nation and to newly (or potentially) connected
community anchor institutions, and strategic to many of Internet2’s members. Even so, we
must as a united R&E community address the inherent tension between the opportunity
gained from integrating this broader community and the challenges, including how
allocations, capacity, and governance will be determined. As resource allocations– both
financial and mind share– are adjusted to serve this larger community, we have

























































2
See
http://www.broadband.gov/plan/
.

3
Through
the
Broadband
Technologies
Opportunity
Program
(BTOP):
http://www2.ntia.doc.gov/


and
the
Broadband
Initiatives
Program
(BIP):
http://www.broadbandusa.gov/.

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unprecedented opportunities to capitalize on higher education’s catalytic role over the last
quarter century. Higher education has been instrumental in developing and deploying ever
more advanced networks for the high-end users at our institutions and organizations–
resulting in downstream benefits for citizens and the public at large.

3. Internet2, in fulfilling our core R&E mission in ways that provide cost efficiencies to our
members, has an opportunity to facilitate and enable the most advanced and innovative
services to our community’s existing member institutions. These services are designed to
support members’ new research applications, their institutions’ service and economic
development missions, emerging community-based projects like InCommon, as well as, new
efficient, scalable approaches to existing services. Increasingly, member institutions are
looking for services “above the network” as a key means to enhance their core IT offerings to
their constituents that can at the same time improve their operation efficiency especially
important during these trying economic times. Together, these are evolving opportunities
that the community believes Internet2 must not miss; in some cases, Internet2 staff and
governance must lead in working with members of our community, and in other cases
strongly partner and work with them to achieve our collective objectives.

Recommendations: A Framework for Change

Because of these influences, the Internet2 Council Officers (ICO) propose that Internet2’s
strategic plan evolve to accommodate these dramatic changes, while reinforcing our ongoing
mission to support the R&E community. Internet2 must embrace expanded work and increase our
leadership profile in advanced networking, computing above the campus, and federal policy
development. Some of this work can and will be done by campuses and research communities,
regional networks, and industry independently, but the outcome(s) will be far more beneficial and
far reaching if all of these various entities collaborate with each other. Internet2 governance
includes members representing these critical key constituencies: campuses and research
communities, state/regional networks, agencies and industry. Input from these members can
provide crucial guidance on Internet2’s response and its appropriate level of commitment to the
components outlined in this document.
Specifically, the Internet2 Council Officers recommend the strategic plan be amended to include
the following directions for 2010 and beyond:

1. Internet2 must plan and escalate our involvement in "Community Commons" tools that allow
"computing and services above the campus," including collaboration tools, cloud computing
services, and other initiatives that allow campuses to leverage other's resources through
Internet2. This evolution from ‘network’ to ‘cyberinfrastructure’ has already occurred on our
members’ campuses and in our industry members’ companies. The community, through open
governance, will advise Internet2 on the appropriate and sustainable level of involvement that
Internet2 should implement, and will provide recommendations in areas that include
leadership, participation, structure and advocacy.

2. Internet2 must be an active participant in those major federal programs and policy initiatives
that appear likely to define the future of advanced networking for the R&E community, other
community anchor institutions, as well as the general public in the U.S. and worldwide.
These programs include, but are not limited to the NTIA BTOP, where Internet2 will closely
partner with NLR, the Northern Tier Network Consortium along with the broader
community; the Department of Energy’s ESnet 100G-prototype network; other federally
funded test-bed networks; and other large-scale partnerships and investments.

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3. Even as we participate in landscape-changing programs, Internet2 must also be a leader in

shaping those programs, actively involving the Internet2 community in all aspects of these
endeavors. In parallel, Internet2 must continue to invest in federal policy development and
advocacy with and on behalf of the community; reinforce the seminal role that the R&E
community has played, and must continue to be a leader of advanced networking; and
provide a critical voice for R&E in network policy in the U.S.

4. Recognizing that research, like the economy, is a global enterprise Internet2 must actively
participate in the international networking community in support of our common research
priorities. An increasing number of Internet2 member universities maintain campuses abroad,
and virtually all have international programs. Internet2 needs to understand the needs of this
growing international academic community and be agile in responding. Further, U.S.-based
researchers depend on the same levels of high-bandwidth access to international research
resources as they do to domestic capabilities. The Internet2 community should work with
other nations and regions of the world to foster the development of a true global fabric of
broadband network capabilities reaching both developed and developing regions of the world.

5. As these programs evolve, Internet2 must find new and effective ways to reassess and
rearticulate our value proposition to the constituencies we serve and to identify appropriate
new constituencies, without jeopardizing our core mission. Such an evaluation must include a
careful rebalancing of membership value for all constituencies along with a comprehensive
plan, with strong community buy-in, for adjusting governance and priorities as the
community changes.

Within these longer-term actions, we intend to deliver clear results across a number of areas in
CY2010. These include:
• Broad community engagement in discussions of the FCC directions and National
Broadband Plan, leading to a clear and broadly-understood role for us as the Internet2
community;
• An effective review of governance that recognizes new roles within federal initiatives and
brings clearer value to all member constituents;
• Completion of the first Cloud Computing experiment;
• Advancement of new services, like the InCommon Certificate service;
• An increased emphasis on international activities which are considered strategic to our future;
and finally,
• A successful transition to a new Internet2 CEO, informed by the changing landscape at
all levels, and consistently guided by a strong, core mission.

Conclusions: Shaping Our World

For many years, our community has decried the lack of a formal, federal program for leadership
in networking at the national level and internationally. Now, the federal government has defined a
new vision for a national program that critically includes telecommunications in every arena—
from education to health to public safety to national competitiveness. Internet2 and our member
institutions are clearly identified as having a long history of leadership in providing the key
innovations and practical solutions within this space. We have been given unprecedented
opportunities to expand that leadership in ways that will impact our world for decades to come.
Our legacy will be shaped by how we respond.

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