ERIC Number: EJ901487
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010
Pages: 13
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1528-5324
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Innovating in the Cloud: Exploring Cloud Computing to Solve IT Challenges
Sheard, Reed
EDUCAUSE Quarterly, v33 n2 2010
When the author was brought on as CIO of Westmont College in October 2008, the president, Board of Trustees, and campus environment made it clear that technology needed a major overhaul to meet the college's growing requirements. Also, these changes needed to happen without significantly increasing the IT budget or staff. Marketing Charts projected that smartphones will surpass feature phones by the middle of 2011. An early indicator of a technology shift on campus was Westmont's significant yearly increase in mobile Internet usage among students and faculty. An influx of new clients and devices arrive every fall with the incoming freshmen, and new students expect to connect anytime, anywhere. The college's students needed a technology service platform that would meet this expectation, but Westmont's limited wireless and antiquated online resources and IT offerings came up short. The college had expensive IT assets with high up-front costs that were complex and time-consuming to manage. In this article, the author discusses how utilizing cloud computing technologies enabled Westmont College to not only solve these problems but also to free up resources for other forward-looking initiatives. (Contains 9 figures, 1 table and 1 endnote.)
Descriptors: Problem Solving, Computer Mediated Communication, Educational Finance, Innovation, Computer Software, Risk, Vendors, Internet, Information Technology, Computer Security, Technology Planning, Information Storage, Shared Resources and Services, Access to Information, College Administration, Outsourcing, Handheld Devices
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: California
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A