PeachNet had a long and storied history by the time I arrived in Georgia in 2009. It was well led and managed by Chief Technology Officer John Scoville and Director Ed Mariello (?). Off of this well-designed and managed backbone, we were able to implement a number of significant improvement to the benefit of the universities and the state in the six years I was the CIO. These improvements included:
- Conversation of PeachNet from a network to a private cloud;
- Significant dual-homing of the USG institutions ensuring the network never failed; and,
- Expansion of PeachNet to Georgia K-12.
My involvement in each of these achievements varied as you might expect. John and Ed already had excellent plans to deploy the private cloud version of PeachNet. My role was to accelerate adoption by the USG institutions in 2011 through the recruitment of a new team customer service advocates under the leadership of James Squires. This program is detailed elsewhere on this page but accelerated the adoption of private cloud technologies. The growth from PeachNet from a network to a private cloud is detailed in a EdTech article.
In a similar manner, John and Ed was aware of the dual-homing issue with USG institutions. In some cases, this was a matter of the lack of availability of fiber such as as College of Coastal Georgia. In other cases such as Savannah and other urban centers, there was limited fiber path diversity. We worked with local fiber companies to increase the diversity of fiber paths so that each institution was dual-homed and one squirrel attack, described below, would not take down the network. This difficult part was there was no funding available so we had to fund this over time internally with existing funds or revenue growth funds.
Finally, the expansion of PeachNet to K-12 was a partnership between Bob Swiggum, the K-12 CIO and I. We intended for the expansion to take place in 2013 but a K-12 funding mishap delayed the project a year. In 2014, the project was implemented. Multiple state agencies worked together to make the expansion of PeachNet to K-12 a reality.
I was in active conversations with the Georgia judicial branch to move them to PeachNet and again, save the state a great deal of money while dramatically increasing bandwidth and storage to the courthouses. Regrettably, the initiative died with my departure highlighting the value of reputation and leadership, and the fleeting moments of opportunity when working within a political system.
If you are reading this website sequentially, the next chapter is lowering the cost of higher education. There are a number of initiatives in that chapter so there should be something for everyone.