Dive Brief:
- While many CIOs in the corporate sector are seeing more funding for IT needs, colleges and universities are on the other end of the spectrum, forced to figure out how to do a lot with a little.
- Campus Technology reports one strategy for coaxing more funding out of tight budgets is to start with small projects that can prove their worth and inspire additional allocations for later initiatives.
- Also helpful is shifting to cloud computing, getting rid of the “physical footprint” of IT on campus, and working with faculty, administrators, and students to focus on the technologies that are most critical to their working and learning environments.
Dive Insight:
Many campuses have begun the shift to the cloud, freeing up space and some workload on campus while making their networks more accessible for the mobile realities of modern campus life. The key to this shift is being strategic. Transferring one application at a time ensures proper attention can be paid to minor details that will keep apps functional and accessible to campus users when they need them. Budgets are tight on college and university campuses. Unlike in much of the corporate sector, the increasingly critical nature of technology to operations does not always mean additional resources to fund it. IT leaders can take that as a challenge to get creative.