Aggregation

 

In order to achieve a scalable architecture, scaling of the service administrative components, as well as the technical components, must be included in the the design of the service. Given the fiscal reality that no single service provider will likely have the staffing levels to single-handedly provision the administrative infrastructure necessary to support ten to seventy thousand individual clients directly, a strategy of client aggregation will be necessary. Client aggregation simply means that groupings of clients are created so that the service provider can interact with a single designated contact for the group, instead of each group member individually. This contact point is refered to here as the local service administrator. The local administrator acts as a first-level contact for the group members, and provides a well-defined contact point between the group and the service provider. The local electronic mail administrator will take responsibility for activities such as

the creation, deletion, and modification of [electronic mail accounts], necessary accounting, and the reconfiguration of related features such as mailing lists, bulletin boards, and instructional configuration

While client groupings may be arbitrary, they may also fall along traditional organizational lines such as departments, faculties, colleges, labs, administrative offices, or other workgroups.

A successful client aggregation strategy should result in a massively reduced administrative burden for the service provider; potentially an order of magnitude fewer individuals to service directly and several orders of magnitude fewer service requests. This occurs due to the lack of direct involvement in the routine administration of moves, adds and changes, the resolution of day-to-day client questions, and direct client training. Further administrative savings will be realized by the service provider by ensuring the automation of resource intensive activities such as billing, resource monitoring, and system auditing. A successful aggregation strategy will result in:

• the service provider staff minimizing their time spent in the daily client-oriented administrative effort.
• the service provider staff focusing on the overall institutional functions, such as auditing and system management.
• a high degree of automation for both the daily tasks local administrators will face, and the institutional tasks the service provider staff will face.
• flexibility in the association of clients to administrators.
• tolerance of very large client groups, such as undergraduate students grouped by college, or big courses.

The existence of a client aggregation strategy such as local electronic mail service administrators should not prevent individuals that have no obvious or existing aggregation group membership from subscribing to the service.