Education System in Need of Flexible Infrastructure that Enables Rapid Innovation

Laura M. Patterson, CIO, University of Michigan

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Laura M. Patterson, CIO, University of Michigan

Challenges in technology to meet enterprise needs in 2014
The greatest challenges facing research universities are the technology driven changes in teaching and research, consumer driven changes in services, and he need for scale in an increasingly perilous world. Technology along with various social factors are driving disruptive change in the education industry, much like the changes experienced in other industries. Although learning and collaboration technologies are one of the fastest growing market segments in the echnology industry at this time, the technologies, tools and services needed to meet the challenges that education, as an industry, faces have not yet come to fruition. The demands for change are now, but the technology solutions are not yet available.

"Team-based science,team-based learning, the globalization of the University and mobility are pushing us to anytime, anywhere at-scale global services"

Solutions that would make my job easier
The things that keep me awake at night are how to enable the innovation of a research and student community while also protecting the information assets of he enterprise in a bring-your-owneverything world. Here is what we need: a robust identity management and role-based security for managing self-registered evices on the network, and access to enterprise information resources; a smart network that segments and directs traffic based on the content of the information; a flexible infrastructure that enables rapid innovation, protection of enterprise assets, and unlimited access to anytime, anywhere collaboration and engagement; and scale to accommodate ever-increasing expectations and requirements.

Trends impacting enterprise business environment
The technology trends that are having significant impact on the research university enterprise are cloud, bring your own everything, and scale. The enterprise s moving from an onpremise model to a mobile, cloud model. Team-based science, teambased learning, the globalization of the university, and mobility are pushing us to anytime, anywhere atscale global services.

Changing Role of CIOs
My role as CIO of a research university has moved from infrastructure and technology provider to service provider and strategic business enabler. Higher ducation has come under intense public pressure and scrutiny to reduce the cost of education and to deliver a new model of personalized, technology-enhanced learning. American research universities also are being asked to drive new innovations to spur the economy and solve the world’s most hallenging problems. Technology is the response to these complex demands. As the CIO, I have become a valued member of the teams working to develop he strategies for reinventing education and enabling faster innovation.