Take a look at a few of the findings from the EDUCAUSE Center For Analysis and Research’s report on IT delivery in higher education.
Nearly half of institutions have outsourced at least one non-cloud service.
More than 80% of institutions have moved at least one service to the cloud.
About one-third of institutions share services.
This shouldn’t come as any surprise to those who have been paying attention to the revolution going on in IT. Simply put, the way IT conducts business is changing. In fact, the numbers above have likely increased since they were published, and that trend is set to continue into the future.
Higher education institutions are realizing the potential of the cloud for less expensive services and less physical space taken up for those services. We’ve talked about this shift before—very soon there will be a stronger concentration on managing the vendors, services, and outsourced materials than there will be on managing infrastructure and technical resources.
So the distribution of IT is clearly changing, and that means that there are going to be changes in the types of skills that IT departments around the country will require. This doesn’t mean that technical skills will suddenly become obsolete, but we most likely will see a shift in the skills that make a successful IT employee.
Communication Skills
Soft skills like communication are already important, but as IT begins working less with hardware and more with vendors and contracts, these soft skills are going to become even more crucial.
Legal Proficiency
More contracts and vendors, and all the new regulatory and security requirements are going to drive a need for CIOs to have legal experts on hand.
Service Management Knowledge
Knowledge of service management frameworks and tools will be crucial to making service delivery and management more efficient.
Service Management Specialists
As this new focus on service management continues to increase, we’ll be seeing positions popping up for service management specialists and vendor management.
As you can see, these changes are all related to the new focus we’re seeing in higher education IT. Notice how many of these positions relate to the management of vendors and services. That’s because we’re seeing an increasing number of apps and services being offered to colleges and universities each year. As they move to manage these services and integrate them into their current apps and legacy systems, it will become crucial that they have the ability to do this securely and in compliance with federal regulations.
At N2N, we developed our integration platform specifically with these integration challenges in mind. Our focus on higher education allows us to tailor individual solutions for each of our partners, scaling our services to meet their needs.
The changes in IT distribution and management are only going to accelerate in coming years, so it’s important that you have a plan in place to deal with these changes. Give us a call if you’d like to hear more about our integration solutions for your campus.
At N2N, we pride ourselves in being on the cutting edge of education and technology, and we’re constantly looking for new and innovative ways to help students learn and professors teach. That’s why we pay close attention to the best edtech bloggers and their ideas. Edtech blogs are useful for both faculty and administrators, and there are quite a few of them around. There are plenty of great edtech blogs out there for you to follow, but we’ve brought together some of our favorites. So take a look at these edtech bloggers and see what you’ve been missing out on.
ProfHacker
ProfHacker is an engaging and informative blog with an entire team of higher ed experts as contributors. Readers get a great look at fresh, varied content on teaching, technology, and everything in between. Edited by Jason B. Jones, Director of Educational Technology at Trinity College, and George H. Williams, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Upstate, ProfHacker provides an insightful look at edtech, from a the point of view of a slew of different writers who know it best.
The blog is published by Anthony Salcito, a vice president of education at Microsoft. Salcito uses the blog to highlight inspiring educators, as well as break down technology and policy in classrooms around the world. Salcito also encourages readers to submit names of inspirational educators, and explores the issues surrounding accessibility to education around the world.
Hack Education
Audrey Watters blog is one of the most thought-provoking and insightful blogs in edtech. A “recovering academic,” Watters offers thoughts on the future of technology and education, from someone who’s both finished degrees and dropped out of them. Frustrated by the lack of edtech coverage, Watters began Hack Education in 2010 with the goal of, “trying to create the sort of publication that I’d want to read: one that’s smart and snarky, one that’s free of advertising and investor influence.”
College Web Editor
Blogger Karine Joly sums up College Web Editor as, “News, tips and, hopefully, some good ideas for people taking care of websites and online marketing in colleges and universities.” Begun in 2005, the blog now boasts more than 10,000 unique page views each month, as visitors come to learn about the Web, marketing, and PR in higher education. Joly is the founder of Higher Ed Experts and author of the capstone graduate course for the MBA in social media marketing at Southern New Hampshire University.
These bloggers all share one common trait—a passion for education, and a desire to see technology improving the lives of students, teachers, and administrators. When you work with N2N, you’re getting a partner that shares those same passions. We see an opportunity to use edtech to create a fully integrated campus that works for everyone. So contact N2N Services today if you’d like to learn more about the intersection of education and technology, and what we can accomplish together.
At N2N, our motto is “connect anything to anything,” and we are constantly leading the pack when it comes to higher education systems integration. Providing colleges and universities with a solution that interconnects their disparate data systems has always been our goal, and we’ve developed our Integration Cloud platform, called Illuminate, to do just that. Illuminate takes each data source and integrates them securely and affordably. But we want to keep pushing the boundaries of what our technology can do for higher education. We want to extend this data connectivity with a rich, in-depth, and interactive mobile application.
That’s why we’ve teamed up with Modo Labs. Together, we intend to provide a truly stunning mobile solution that allows students to connect to their financial data, course work, grades, and other information, while at the same time empowering them to interact with their teachers, advisors, tutors, and other campus activities. This innovative new platform is the product of collaboration between our Illuminate date engine and Modo Lab’s Kurogo, a mobile app assembly platform.
So who are Modo Labs, and why is this partnership so transformative for higher
education? Based out of Cambridge, MA, Modo Labs provides a complete mobile solution that empowers ordinary people to create their own applications. These types of mobile capabilities used to only be the domain of mobile developers and expensive consultants. Now, Modo Labs Kurogo Platform gives non-developers an outstanding app assembly system with powerful mobile implementation and development capabilities. The secret is in Kurogo’s combination of data access, pre-built functionality, and ease of use. Today, creating mobile apps for campus is no longer out of reach for non-technical staff or business owners.
And how does this platform fit in with N2N’s Illuminate data engine? Well, the combination of the two allows a massive simplification in the mobile app building process. Illuminate integrates and allows access to the multitude of different data sources in a university system, while Kurogo quickly and easily mobilizes them into a well-developed mobile experience.
Stewart Elliot, Modo Labs CEO said, “We are excited to partner with N2N Services. The combination of the two platforms makes it easier than ever for Universities to provide the comprehensive mobile experience that students expect. Students will be able to easily accomplish even more important tasks on their mobile phones, including the ability to perform direct transactions in virtually any student information system, such as class registration, yet do so as part of an advanced, interactive and rich mobile experience.”
This combination of higher education technology is a major development for colleges and universities around the country. At N2N, we understand the importance of easy-to-use technology in campus life. Today’s students are used to instant access and in-depth mobile apps. Our partnership with Modo Labs provides these institutions with the best of both worlds: secure enterprise data access, and an unsurpassed front-end mobile experience.
If you would like to hear more about our partnership with Modo Labs, and how your college can benefit, contact N2N Services today.
“N2N Services, Inc., a leading platform provider for Higher Education systems integration, andModo Labs, a Cambridge, MA based provider of the leading mobile engagement and campus platform for universities and enterprises, announced a partnership that will deliver an innovative mobile application technology solution to institutions of higher learning. With this partnership, N2N Services and Modo Labs will give their clients and the marketplace a comprehensive, secure and affordable platform to integrate disparate data systems, and extend this data connectivity with a beautiful, rich and interactive mobile application.” Read the rest of our press release here.
Today, students are used to accessing data and resources via mobile platforms anytime and anywhere, and they don’t care to know the inner workings of the systems. The Modo Labs and N2N partnership allows the students to access their enterprise resources, campus feeds and critical information securely through their mobile device, stated Kiran Kodithala, CEO and President of N2N Services. Students, Administrators and Faculty at campuses have been looking for a comprehensive mobile app that they can use for student engagement and student success. This partnership gives institutions of higher education the best of all worlds. While N2N provides secure enterprise data access, Modo Labs offers the best-of-breed front-end mobile experience that makes it possible to quickly leverage that data on any device.
This partnership allows students to access their enterprise resources, campus feeds and critical information securely through their mobile devices. Students, administrators and faculty have been looking for a comprehensive mobile app that they can use to engage students and give them the tools and information they need to succeed. This partnership gives institutions of higher education the best of all worlds; N2N provides enterprise data access while Modo Labs provides the rich, easy-to-use and impressive front-end experience.
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