Two Cloud Reports

Two reports of interest have been issued recently: the first is Shaping the Higher Education Cloud and the second is The Future of cloud Computing. The chief academic officer will find both reports informative and should assist in future planning efforts.

The first report, Shaping the Higher Education Cloud, is a joint report from EDUCAUSE and NACUBO. The report provides the findings from a meeting held earlier this year in Tempe, Arizona attended by CIOs from many colleges and universities. The outcome of the meeting was a list of issues each campus must address prior to implementing cloud computing services; the topics are all the familiar ones led by security and content location. The CAO needs to be aware of the issues that are coming from a single voice on campus, Information Technology. Another report needs to be developed from a faculty and/or student perspective. The right plan for a campus will always exist between the early adopters and the departments being asked to change. IT has always been eager to ask colleges to change but have been reluctant to follow that advice with emerging cloud computing technologies.

The second report is from the Pew Research Center, The Future of Cloud Computing. The theme of the report is two emerging technologies will impact higher education by 2020. The first is change will be future access to university IT resources will be with a mobile device. The success of the Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android are defining the future requirements of our students. The second change will be cloud computing. Microsoft and Google have established a new model for campus IT departments and have shown many CAOs that the University can save money using the cloud. Recently the State of Kentucky moved 700,000 students and teachers to Microsoft mail and saved millions of dollars. There are many examples of Universities implementing Google’s mail solution and experiencing similar savings. The future will be defined by many of today’s university IT application providers moving their software to the cloud and sell the application to the university on a software as a service (SaaS) platform. What this means with regard to students, faculty and staff has yet to be imagined. The report is very clear the change is coming, and universities need to be prepared.

Mobility and the Academic Library

I thought our readers might be interested in this interview with Doyle about the impact of the cloud and mobility on the future of academic library services. Elsevier interviewed Doyle shortly after a presentation; the interview is on page two of Elsevier's current issue of Library Connect. The complete text of the interview is available on the main Library Connect page.

Cloud Summary from Gartner Symposium

From last week's Gartner Symposium, here's a summary of the top 5 cloud-related things from the conference:

• Clearer conversations about the cloud
• Demonstrated examples of success in the cloud
• Real commitment from Google for the enterprise
• Seeing a mainstream "conference 2.0"
• Acknowledgment of a "new normal"

Read more about each of these. Also, Appirio has published a list of the bottom 5 cloud-related things from the Gartner Symposium last week.

Reforming Higher Education

Interesting that two newspapers (Lexington Herald-Leader and New York Times) today published articles on reforming higher education. Not revolutionary in today’s economic environment but still causes one to pause. One article focused on too many universities wanting to become research centers, and the second compared higher education to Detroit. Both articles came to the same conclusion; universities are spending too much money on areas not relevant to today’s needs.

Also it's important to note that Obama has continued to focus on using higher education to improve our chance to compete in the world economy and to encourage innovation across the sciences. The challenge to the Chief Academic Officer is to determine if it is time to reevaluate the mission and goals of the university or to just ignore the negative comments as idle chatter of the ignorant. The cost of a university degree and the dismal outlook for jobs will pressure students (and their parents) to decide if the financial commitment is worth four years of intense study. Interesting the first move by Obama was to recommend the government provide financial aid rather than continuing to subsidize the financial businesses. The action should encourage the CAO to evaluate university business practices to determine if there are other areas the Obama administration will encourage reform. It appears it is time to be bold if one is to be recognized as a leader. Simple, just follow the President’s example.

The Cloud and Libraries

Most libraries, including university libraries, typically offer at least a few computers available for use by the general public. In the university library, the purpose of these machines is primarily to provide the general public with access to the library catalog, subscription databases, and in the case of federal depository libraries, government information. For obvious reasons these public machines are pretty locked down, and they generally offer few applications beyond a web browser and perhaps word processing software. Some libraries have moved toward thin client solutions, but many still manage expensive desktops which barely make use of the 80GB or more hard drives. Utilizing cloud technologies could potentially make these machines easier to manage and less costly. Read more on the ALA TechSource blog.

The Tower and the Cloud

In addition to The Big Switch, The Tower and the Cloud is another must-read for those interested in the effects of cloud computing on IT as we know it. The Tower and the Cloud is a collection of essays focused specifically on higher education and how these technologies will impact higher education institutions and the IT organization. Librarians, CIOs, faculty, and other experts describe the role of technology in the higher education enterprise and predict where we are headed in the future.

The entire volume is available online.

Managing the Funding Gap

In the current economic environment, it's impossible to avoid our funding situation and what the future may hold. With this blog less than one month old, we've already commented on the future of technology funding on campus and expect many more posts around that topic.

Managing the Funding Gap: How Today’s Economic Downturn Is Impacting IT Leaders and Their Organizations, an EDUCAUSE whitepaper from a December 2008 ECAR Symposium, describes some immediate and long-term responses to the current funding environment. How can you make the best of this difficult situation? Read the full whitepaper online.

2009 Horizon Report Now Available

The Horizon Report, a project co-published by the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, is one of those must-read reports that I look forward to each year (view past reports). The report focuses on emerging technologies for teaching and learning and identifies a timeline for mainstream adoption. The report includes specific examples and challenges, as well as key trends. This year's predictions:

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
Mobiles
Cloud Computing

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
Geo-Everything
The Personal Web

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
Semantic-Aware Applications
Smart Objects

Read the full 2009 Horizon Report online.

The book that started it all

My interest in cloud computing began after reading Nicholas Carr's book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google. Doyle had suggested it to me and was so impressed with the book that he gave copies to his staff. We had several lively discussions about the book which ultimately led us to where we are now, writing and presenting on how the cloud will change higher education IT as we know it.

If you haven't read Carr's book yet, we encourage you to do so. Carr draws a thoughtful, carefully constructed analogy between the evolution of the power utility and the future of computing. The idea of computing as a utility is not new, and especially not now, a year after the book was published, but it makes for very interesting reading. What I find particularly compelling is covered in the second half of the book--the economic and social impact of cloud computing, i.e. what will this all mean for us?

That will be one of the main topics of discussion on this blog--stay tuned.