**** Posted on behalf of Robert Moores at Leeds Metropolitan University ****
I’m looking forward to sharing our experience of using Google Apps Education Edition at Leeds Met. On a broader note, the cloud and its impact on Leeds Met and the wider educational sector are starting to come on to our agenda.
There’s a feeling that the cloud could be as disruptive (positive and negative) as the original PC was. We realise that we need to be developing our understanding of the risks and opportunities that will present themselves, and considering how we can respond through changes to structures, skills, processes and technologies within Leeds Met and across the educational sector.
We are already seeing internal business functions trialling SaaS for non-critical niche applications. Like a PC it can superficially be very easy to purchase and engage with – and often at a price and speed of engagement that the IT Department cannot match.Trying to stop this is unlikely to be as fruitful, so how should we best respond ?
Perhaps the function of the IT Department will change from service provider to service broker / accreditor. We can undertake due diligence on cloud infrastructure, platform and service providers, almost providing a stamp of approval for those providers that meet our criteria – with the carrot that we will support interfaces to these services. An exciting challenge for sure !
