As university budgets shrink, IT budgets feel the pinch as well. Like many of their corporate equals, university and college IT divisions feel the pressure to do more with less but provide the same service level. In the past couple years, many institutions have looked to cloud computing to solve not only their budget issues, but manpower and equipment challenges. The reliance on a stable digital infrastructure by institutional communities is being challenged by the addition of services like course management systems, HD videoconferencing, video servers, and desktop conferencing systems like Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro or Elluminate, not to mention things that students use (illegally) on campus networks like Torrent sites and music file sharing sites. Outsourcing legacy systems like email and work flow collaboration to cloud computing resources is increasingly becoming the solution chosen by university information technology administrators.
In a January 2008 article, Dan Carnevale of The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that at that time, over 1,000 higher education schools had outsourced their email system to Google Gmail (Google Apps Education Edition) or Microsoft Live@edu. Some of the schools deployed the cloud email systems for students only and kept faculty and staff on their homegrown email systems because they had concerns about FERPA and other sensitive data issues. Those that made the switch reported savings ranging from $10,000 - $20,000 per year to $500,000; money that was put towards other systems or reallocated to student services.
In addition to the fiscal savings, the ability of cloud computing services to offer students 5 gigabytes of storage for their email versus a meager 100 mb (or less) that many schools support, meant that they don't have to maintain the servers hosting all that data storage. Many students enter institutions already using a Microsoft Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or Google Gmail account and expect to have the same storage levels and web-based access convenience. (or mobile access with smartphones) Some schools like Drexel University in Philadelphia are letting students dictate their email choice between Google's Gmail or Microsoft Live@edu instead of the institution picking the preferred service. When students graduate, their accounts get to go with them instead of creating a need to forward possibly hundreds of emails out of a university run system to Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo Mail.
In addition to Gmail, many schools have adopted Google Apps for Education to streamline the need to buy ultra expensive Microsoft Office licensing for faculty and staff and to offer a means to collaboration on documents and presentations. The reality is that many faculty, staff, and students were already using Google's public version of these Apps and by signing on to the Education version, institutions brought those users back into the authenticated conclave of university computing behind their own Acceptable Use policies. Not all institutions view Google as the generous giant looking to provide cloud services and convenience to academic institutions. Many see several pitfalls to using Google or other cloud-type services.
"Security is also always an issue when dealing with cloud computing. Not having to administer a cloud environment is convenient, but it also creates a level of separation between the company hosting the cloud and the organization using the cloud" (Ovadia, 2010). If an institution has a server problem or security breach, there is almost immediate response or responsibility, however will it become buyer beware come true when the cloud provider does not respond to fix an immediate and dire server problem or sensitive data has been hacked away. Some have advocated for open cloud standards so if a problem arises, institutions can seamlessly migrate data from one service to another. In the end, there will always be pitfalls to relying on someone else with a corporate bottom line to serve as gatekeeper for essential services like email and data storage. However, the financial benefits and the ability to support other essential services like a CMS or Enterprise Business System might trump the pitfalls keeping those services in-house.
* Ovadia, Steven (2010), 'Navigating the Challenges of the Cloud', Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 29; 233 - 236.
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