As state governors grapple with their budgets for 2012, public universities and colleges are facing some of the deepest funding cuts in memory. To make matters worse, most of the federal stimulus funds, which have helped dull the pain so far, will have been spent by June. It seems almost inevitable that IT departments are going to be asked to…

The University of Washington (UW) adopted a dual-provider cloud-computing strategy, focusing initially on software as a service. The original project--to replace an obsolete alumni e-mail system--resulted in a cloud solution that soon grew to encompass the entire campus community. The policies and contract terms UW developed, focusing on…

In 1995, Gonzaga University embarked on a project to implement a university-wide information system. The search for an "out-of-the-box" solution began following an attempt to build an integrated data management system in-house. In 1994, Gonzaga decided to look at commercial solutions to its database management problems. With the blessing…