If you have been following this column throughout 2010, then you know that I advocate preparing your campus IT organization for what I am convinced will be a tsunami of opportunity presented by cloud and above-campus service offerings. Google Apps, Microsoft Live, Amazon EC2, and a host of other commercial solutions represent what will be only the first wave of cloud solutions to reach widespread adoption by many IT organizations. The coming wave won't just be dominated by commercial providers, but will also provide customized solutions built by higher education for higher education.
In May 2010, EDUCAUSE and NACUBO hosted a workshop for business and technology leaders to discuss how to influence the future makeup of cloud services to meet our communities' needs. The session resulted in a white paper that called on the higher education community to explore the development of a formal cloud computing consortium that could serve as both a clearinghouse for solutions and "would operate as a venture philanthropy, finding and evaluating cloud delivery experiments and matching their sponsors with funding sources. [….] Such a broker/facilitator would reduce the barriers to usage and eliminate or reduce the need to negotiate new contract terms each time a service is consumed or invoked" [1]. These recommendations from the report, along with the steady drumbeat of new cloud-based offerings for higher education [2], make clear the importance of higher education embracing a future that not only expects but also depends on community-developed cloud solutions...
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