What Cloud Service Provider Are Unversities Migrating Towards?

Despite initial wariness of the prospect of losing control of critical It resource, Montclair State University is taking a cautious arroyo to deject computing.

Acquaintance Vice President of Enterprise Engineering science Services Jeff Giacobbe says the public university in Montclair, Northward.J., recently moved twenty,000 pupil email accounts and the institution'due south learning management system (LMS) to the cloud. A new deject-based service for adaptive budget planning also was introduced.

"In higher ed, nosotros're typically a little cautious of cloud services considering we develop a lot of things ourselves and continue them in-house, if possible," Giacobbe says. "Y'all have to inquire whether the cloud tin do a basic service better and, in the procedure, save time for your IT staff. We chose to start our cloud migration with services we knew we could exercise well, in case we had to pull them dorsum on-premises."

Mike Peters, Montclair State University

Montclair State Academy

Making a Checklist of Tech Challenges

Montclair State It initially evaluated cloud providers by asking a serial of questions covering issues such as security, compliance with government regulations, details on the provider's infrastructure and facilities, disaster recovery plans, personnel policies concerning who would handle the university's data, software license agreements, and the availability of exam sites to try out whatsoever changes to the service. Giacobbe recommends that other institutions employ like questionnaires to elicit the detailed data necessary to get in and the higher administration comfy with the choice of providers.

"The checklist gave us insight into how our data was going to be handled before we turned over the keys," he says. "Some vendors couldn't answer the questions, or their answers were off base, and then we evaluated them appropriately."

Going forrard, Montclair State'south website is another obvious candidate for the cloud, where a provider can offer more resilience and better disaster recovery than is possible in-house, Giacobbe says. As part of the university'due south ongoing OneMontclair enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems overhaul, human resources will move to a cloud-based ERP culling. It staff are evaluating options for other departments equally they consider adding resources, but the cloud is already showing its value, Giacobbe says.

"Cloud services are not necessarily cheaper," he admits. "The value lies in the ways they accelerate the speed of innovation and free you from day-to-day maintenance."

A Cloud Upgrade Means Access Anytime, Anywhere

Beyond the shift to host commodity services in the cloud, college ed CIOs increasingly recognize how well cloud services mesh with their specific needs, Gartner Inquiry Director Terri-Lynn Thayer says.

"Cloud computing is predicated on anytime, anywhere access to resources, which is where higher education needs to go," she says. "Cloud apps are agile, designed to evolve much faster than IT can brand changes in-house. And colleges need scalability, which is a key element of the cloud."

Whatsoever successful cloud deployment requires vigilance, Thayer adds. Institutions should investigate the security, reliability and financial stability of the provider before contracting for a service. One time an understanding is signed, colleges should continue to monitor the provider'south tertiary-party security audits and other technical indicators for signs of trouble. User feedback should be an integral part of the ongoing evaluation.

"You tin can't appraise a service's value unless you lot hear from the users," she says. "They are the stakeholders who can tell y'all if the service is working, if in that location are problems that need to be stock-still, or even if it's time to move on to some other solution."

54%

Pct of higher education IT executives surveyed who say their institutions accept migrated email to the cloud

SOURCE:MeriTalk, "Cloud Campus: The Software-Defined College," August 2014

Have a Problem? In that location's Ever Help

Indianapolis-based Marian University has tapped services from the public Net likewise as its private deject for several years, says Peter Williams, assistant vice president and CIO.

The individual liberal arts college, with about iii,000 students, uses the cloud for a mass communications application, its LMS and diverse administrative modules, such as predictive analytics and workflow. Marian's medical school has substantially increased the number of cloud services used by the academy, adding electronic textbooks, a lecture capture system, electronic polling and an assessment service, Williams says.

"Our goal in IT is to be equally efficient and effective as possible," he says. "If we can salve staff time on maintaining services, nosotros tin can focus on helping our users leverage those tools to be successful."

Before making the motion to deject services, colleges should take a close look at their IT infrastructures, and pay special attention to fortifying the edge of the network by ensuring robust authentication systems are in place, Williams advises. IT staff buy-in is also crucial to a successful migration, equally the shift to cloud services may change roles and responsibilities.

"Alter can be unsettling, and you have to work with your staff to frame how to best use their talents in the new environment," he says. "One of the things I tell our staff is that when there's a problem with a deject service, we've got help — there'south a bigger team to solve it."

Leveraging the Cloud for Scalability

With a 5-year engineering plan that calls for Information technology to exist more nimble and support an expanding need for resources, Dominican University in River Forest, Ill., tin can't afford to ignore cloud services, says Jill Albin-Hill, vice president for it and CIO.

"We must leverage the cloud for scalability," she says. "We can't wait to meet the growing needs of our users until we have the funds for in-house implementations."

Dominican University is a private liberal arts establishment with five professional schools. The majority of the university'south nearly 4,000 students commute to form, and deject-based services help to bring the community together, says Albin-Hill.

Similar many other colleges and universities, Dominican dipped its toes in the cloud waters with educatee email. Today, the university's website is hosted in the cloud forth with its prospect management system. Last July, the university completed a yearlong transition from an on-premises LMS to a cloud-based arrangement. The university planned an extended implementation time frame to arrange training and grade redesign.

"Nosotros took our time to get the faculty on board and give them a chance to use the full capabilities of the new tool," she says. "Cloud services, like the rest of what we do, should make things better for end users and enhance learning."

To evaluate a cloud service or to compare with an in-house application, Albin-Hill considers fourth dimension to implementation, staff time to install and maintain the resources, and overall cost. Given lean IT staffs and the imperative for up-to-date resources, colleges must consider cloud-based service alternatives, she says.

"Capitalize on your strengths, and then outsource the rest of your needs to the cloud," she advises. "Pick good-­quality providers and agree them ­accountable. Be cautious, practice your due diligence, but there'south no need to be scared."

Source: https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2015/02/3-colleges-make-way-cloud-computing

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