Higher education is facing a conundrum. Institutions are under constant pressure to manage their cash flow based on enrollment. Compounding this problem is the fact that many colleges and universities are running on older, outdated IT infrastructure, which limits them in many ways.
Legacy technology is expensive to maintain, which puts schools in a financial corner in terms of IT budget. Older technology can be complex as operational requirements are often manual and cumbersome when performing updates to hardware firmware, drivers, etc. This type of work is often mundane and tedious — taking up time that could be better spent focusing on more strategic projects.
In addition, just like in business, higher education institutions have SLAs (service level agreements) that dictate application availability for critical applications, such as student services information systems and learning management systems. Students and faculty demand 24/7 availability. How does one manage this “continuity” requirement? High availability and resiliency fall under the category of infrastructure management as well. If you want some form of continuity, you need a proper data protection plan in place, as well as a means to continue operations in the event of a disaster that renders the production systems unavailable. This takes time, knowledge, and planning, not to mention a financial investment, if redundant infrastructure is required.
What if IT could focus on delivering new applications to administrative faculty and students, rather than focusing their time, energy, and budget on maintaining the existing infrastructure? Today’s critical educational applications offer more flexibility and productivity for students and faculty. Students demand their application experiences be available on mobile platforms. They want to consume IT as they would anything else. If the university wants to attract and retain the best students possible, they must be at the forefront of technology. That means delivering modern applications that are both cloud-based and mobile-enabled. The same goes for faculty. If they can easily use their learning management systems, they will, in turn, be more productive and focus more time and energy on teaching and research.
So how do you solve the puzzle of helping collegiate IT organizations to become more agile and focus their time and energy on delivering new applications that further the mission of the college? The answer is simple. Find a way to offload the day-to-day management of existing infrastructure to a managed services partner who has the operational expertise in critical student and administrative applications as well as the means to deliver current applications 24/7 through a cloud-based data protection approach. You may find that outsourcing these critical, but mundane tasks will be financially feasible while enabling the in-house IT staff to focus on what’s most important.
American Digital has the expertise of working with educational infrastructure as well as knowledge of core applications used by higher education. As a managed service provider, we can help you move your mission forward in the most cost-effective manner possible.
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