The Managed Service Provider (MSP) SIG had 3 goals:
Define pain points that Managed Providers experience in implementing Ed-Fi technology and making it available to community members as productized offerings.
Provide input into and feedback on the Alliance’s products and roadmap especially as it relates to deployment, automation, security, management, and other priority concerns.
Discuss ideas and opportunities to unblock managed providers in ways that help them scale their offerings.
These were the outcomes of the SIG from these goals are:
1.) Managed Service Providers Need Automation Technology and Approaches to Reach Scale
Managed Service Providers were consistent in endorsing automation technology and approaches for their organizations to effectively reach scale. MSPs use automation for many aspects of their core IT operations and in numerous facets such as deployments, configuration, system health checks and security scans. Automation, paired with flexible, on-demand resources from cloud providers (Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform), allow MSPs to accommodate demand in ways that traditional on-premise installations would be limited.
Members from the MSP SIG both prompted new updates to the Ed-Fi roadmap, such as the Admin API and Single-Sign On for Ed-Fi Tools technical designs, which was created and reviewed as part of the SIG. The Admin API is a new product on the Ed-Fi roadmap which will allow for the management of the Ed-Fi ODS/API platform via API interfaces, which can only be done via system scripting tasks or user interfaces like Admin App. The SIG confirmed that today's approaches are burden to deploying Ed-Fi solutions and API-based approaches are preferred. Single-Sign On requests led to the roadmap additions of support for OpenID Connect as an additional authorization strategy, which is preferred in cloud and MSP-solutions to integrate with existing identity stores in those environments.
Also within this SIG, MSP members shared their best practices and internal projects for solutions for Ed-Fi automation, which was helpful to review both for MSP group practice share and to confirm roadmap deliverables.
From these conversations in the SIG (and related in-person meetings like Tech Congress), Ed-Fi is well positioned to continue to listen and receive feedback from the active MSP community, both for adoption of deliverables from the roadmap and continued feedback into valuable future roadmap deliverables.
2.) Ed-Fi Can Improve on Security Outreach and Coordination with MSP Community
The MSP group provided a strong signal that they wanted to hear more about Ed-Fi and its activities on security. Security is a difficult, nuanced topic for any organization to manage in the public, as some details need to be held tightly within trusted groups, in order to prevent wider attacks from the public and/or bad actors. The Ed-Fi Tech Team presented a deeper look into the security work we do, including code reviews, automated security scans from GitHub and the annual security reviews we do on ODS/API and Admin App. The MSP group was pleased and reassured in our work after disclosing the steps Ed-Fi takes to deliver secure solutions for our stakeholders. However, from this, we've learned that Ed-Fi can improve on outreach and coordination on security topics as relevant to their customer work in the field.
3.) Ed-Fi Technology is Core to Managed Service Providers
From this MSP SIG, we've learned that Ed-Fi technology is delivering on core values important to these partners' businesses and in support of a greater mission within K-12 data interoperability. We've heard directly and indirectly, the enthusiasm and passion for Ed-Fi work — it's technology deliverables, it's convening ability across numerous related communities and other aspects — and many identified that Ed-Fi is a core component into partner businesses and the work they deliver.
4.) Other Product Roadmap Features
From this discussion, we've learned and supported best practices MSPs use that is complimentary to the deployment and usage of Ed-Fi Technology. We've gathered details in feature requests to continue to support the growth of the MSP sector - such as the support for external cache for the ODS/API to work better in cloud configurations, optimizations to release delivery cycle via Docker, how to store configuration information securely in cloud environments and more technical details. These topics are in processes with the Ed-Fi Tech Team and additional roadmap considerations are being added to address these concerns to support MSP growth and more Ed-Fi deployments. Below are tickets that are in progress around these requested activities:
ODS-5321 - Getting issue details... STATUS
ODS-4723 - Getting issue details... STATUS