As many institutions continue to struggle with rising costs and increasing complexity of their technology environment, the notion of Shared Services as a solution to these problems needs to be more closely examined. But, what exactly is “Shared Services”? Depending on your perspective, it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people - a bit like the old "six blind men and the elephant" parable from the Hindu Rigveda. Breaking things down into the categori

We often hear about organizations who call in a consulting firm or an outside expert to perform an “IT Assessment”, where the target audience is generally the CEO, President, or Board of Directors. In addition to checking the temperature of an organization’s IT operations and overall soundness, technology assessments are an important component of due diligence in mergers and acquisitions. So, what does a “good” IT assessment consist of? In my experience, a solid IT assessmen

Everyone knows about “the cloud” these days. From the cynical techie definition “running your stuff on someone else’s computer” to the CEO-who-got-religion “it's the only way we can stay in business!”, opinions run the gamut between skepticism and naive exuberance. Rapid developments of internet and web technology have made the cloud possible. In past years, the model began to evolve as rather primitive (by today's standards) hosting services. ASPs or Application Service Pro

The concept of “shared services”, where multiple institutions band together around providing a joint solution to a problem, has tremendous attraction for higher education institutions. Costs continue to rise for basic administrative software and services, threatening the very survival of many institutions - in particular smaller private liberal arts colleges and universities who are desperately trying to regain profitability. How can that be done when administrative softwar

If you are currently a CIO, or are in a similar leadership position in technology, always be a “tough act to follow”. Of the several CIO positions I have assumed, so far in my experience all of them came in on the heels of a predecessor who had so many odd quirks that it made me look like a superstar, or at least normal, by comparison! I’ve seen offices that needed to be cleaned out of chicken feathers because my predecessor CIO sold eggs at the office. I’ve seen dog urine

Yes, I said CEO, not CISO or CIO! It’s not a typo. What’s the most important thing you can do as a CEO to improve your organization’s overall information security? Is it hiring and retaining top quality information security technical expertise? Is it purchasing and installing the latest and greatest information security, antivirus, and intrusion detection software? While having qualified information security technical experts on your team and having the best information sec

This may come as a shock to some aspiring CIOs. But, if you want to rise to the top position, you must be prepared to move. Maybe that’s just to another department, maybe it’s across town, maybe it’s to another city or state, maybe it’s to another country! But, it is a fact of life that in order to advance you often need to take a new job with a new company. These days, universities and colleges seldom promote from within to the top technology position, unless they are sti

When I started in the Higher Ed IT business in 1982, there were huge rooms filled with mainframe computers. They cost millions of dollars. There were many employees to keep these things running, and produce reports and keep the primitive administrative terminal transaction systems alive. But, fast forward to 2017. By and large, the room full of mainframe computers is gone, along with their enormous singular expense. They’ve been replaced with efficient server racks of many co

Someone recently asked me what I thought the top three challenges facing Higher Ed institutions today might be. "Only three?", I thought to myself. Everyone can come up with a different set of three, but here are mine. 1. Financial Survival - in an ever more competitive world of low cost education opportunities, how can traditional Higher Ed institutions survive and attract enough students to not just meet budget, but to build financial reserves for future programs, mainten

In my experience, many IT departments fail simply because they have not been properly organized. Here are the essential components to an effective IT organization. Infrastructure Support - you will need a dedicated team of system experts and engineers to support the technical environment, preferably under a single director. The quantity (but not the quality!) of individuals required depends on how much your company or institution relies on the cloud or other off-site computin