Dive Brief:
- Cloud deployments of higher education tools require new skillsets of IT staffers and revised expectations from campus stakeholders, in many cases making change management the bigger challenge than the new technology.
- Entire IT departments and individual job descriptions are being restructured and rewritten to reflect the new reality, causing anxiety that administrators must stay ahead of.
- According to eCampus News, farming out certain data management responsibilities to external vendors requires a level of standardization that also leads to strain in the migration to the cloud.
Dive Insight:
The cloud was originally seen as an unsafe alternative to local storage and data management, but it has quickly become the preferred best practice on campuses nationwide. The cloud offers a level of flexibility and reliability that is arguably unmatched by traditional methods. As colleges and universities continue to migrate more of their processes to the cloud, outsourcing a portion of design and management along the way, stakeholder expectations will have to be anticipated early on in the strategic planning process. Buy-in at all levels will make for a much smoother transition.