EDUCAUSE | Web Seminars Contributed by EDUCAUSE and Outsourcing

Exploring Student Communications Services for the 21st Century

ckeller — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 09:57:42 -0500

Today’s IT leaders face multiple challenges united by a common thread: determining when to provide custom IT services for students, when to facilitate their use of external IT services, and when to simply get out of students’ way.

A decade ago students accessed the Internet through the school’s modem pool. Today, they make their own selection from an array of broadband services. What's the future for e-mail and services like IM and personal Web pages? Students are increasingly arriving on campus with extensive experience with existing products, and many are choosing to forward their school e-mail to outside providers. Should we attempt to stem or embrace this trend?

Two of the largest undergraduate schools at Penn decided to work with Microsoft to offer students hosted e-mail and communications services in the upcoming school year. The presenters will discuss how the schools are approaching this issue, the advantages it offers students and others, and elements critical to the initiative’s success.

Outsourcing E-Mail and Other Commodity Services

ckeller — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:05:00 -0500

Increasingly campuses are considering outsourcing commodity IT services such as e-mail, instant messaging, and calendaring, either for students or for the entire institution. One of the most widely discussed options is Google Apps for Education, and the mailing lists are abuzz with strong feelings on all sides. In this presentation, we'll welcome a speaker from Google to discuss their offering, as well as a speaker from Northwestern University, which recently selected Google’s solution after a lengthy and intense investigation of alternatives.

Outsourcing and Offshoring

drupal — Thu, 05 May 2005 16:00:07 -0500

Outsourcing and offshoring provide opportunities for cost reduction and service improvements. It is important, however, to carefully select target tasks and services and to have appropriate controls in place. This presentation will provide an overview of these factors and discuss some outcomes of offshoring at Stanford.

ResNet Outsourcing

drupal — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:47:30 -0600

For many institutions, providing high quality networking service for residential students has become increasingly complex, expensive, and a significant drain on staff resources. Uncontrolled viruses and worm outbreaks fueled by unprotected student computers, ever increasing demands for bandwidth for peer-to-peer and other high-bandwidth applications, and increasing legal activity around file sharing have all combined to negatively impact networking and computer performance and increase support demands at a time of constrained budgets and staff resources. At Ithaca College all of these issues came to a head during the Fall 2003 semester, and resulted in the decision to outsource ResNet operations for 4,400 residential students beginning in the Fall of 2004. During this session two administrators from Ithaca College will discuss the factors that led to the outsourcing decision, the issues they dealt with during the transition, and their experience with the outsourcing venture to date.