A long time ago 2008 to be exact I wrote about the future of computing in universities.
My view was then, and remains that the future of IT services is as a resource broker of facilitator as most of the classic KTLO work can be outsourced. Since 2008 the world has changed in a number of ways
- the public cloud has become cheaper, more reliable and more accessible
- demonstrated by the number of infrastructureless comapnies eg dropbox
- a lot of infrastructure has become commoditized - which has driven students to self outsource.
- Coupled with the availablity of cloud based resources, the last justification for access to student provision, access to specialist resources, has disappeared
- MOOC's have changed to model for access to university level courses
- add to cloud and self outsourcing students can increasingly self structure
- problem of accreditation remains however.
Given my views on the subject I was interested to hear Nick Tate who is currently head of RDSI and this year's head of the ACS and previously the CIO of UQ present on Disrupting the University
As always, these are my notes and my interpretation of Nick's presentation and do not necessarily represent his views. At the same time the notes and interpretation are my own and not my employer's.
Change
- change is coming but change is part of IT
- now seeing disruptive rather than progressive change
- much in the way pc's ate mainframe computing's lunch
- or how kodakinvented digital camera and then failed to capitalize
Challenges
- education challenge
- financial challenge
- people challenge
- technology challenge
education issues
- mooc - open courseware
- interesting how quickly moocs gained momentum
- MIT courseware opened 2008
- initially gradual uptake
- coursera now 3,200,000 registrations,udacity 750000,edX 67500
- massive momentum 8000 reg/day per coursera
- courses free content - changed value implications for teaching as no longer funded from course fees
- how pay for course devlopment
- see top tier universities going to open course provision - implaction for tier 2 and below
- implications for IT provision for teaching
- students selfprovide
- how to monetize open courses
- value of ccontent versus accreditation
- unis give credit on basis of course completion - pay for accreditation and examination
- mooc - open courseware
Implications for IT
- how finance infrastructure?
- public university model looks to be unsustainable
- outsourcing of standard processes
- university spending on IT dropping
- innovation required
- how finance infrastructure?
People
- skills vs longevity vs external competition
- need to work faster and better - will not have enough people
- 'work smarter' not a cliche but an imperative
- 'work smarter' not a cliche but an imperative
- need to work faster and better - will not have enough people
- skills vs longevity vs external competition
Technology
- need to innovate and try to get leverage
- use of cloud - on demand - scalable
- rdsi and aws
- public cloud costs compelling - debate on cost is efefctively over
- private cloud /rdsi too smallfor economies of scale
- public cloud like ausgrid, pay for what you use, and is investment free
- usage charge only - scale and business model
- why IT infrastructure when you have cloud?
- durability of public cloud 11 9's durability -better than achievable on private datacentres
- same metrics for security investment - why did aws get cia contract
- potentially still a price barrier in education but amazon costs progressively reducing
How to react?
- possibly too much focus in established IT on service delivery rather than innovation
- cloud/outsourcing allows innovation by freeing resource
- service delivery concerns effectively outsourced
- at same time get better availability service important for pervasive IT
- MOOC's all run on public cloud because cannot scale otherwise
- => implication is need to outsouce and let go of commodity computing
- students to self outsource
- IT to support teaching learning and research
- implies greater engagement
- implies greater engagement
- => implication is need to outsouce and let go of commodity computing
Key Technologies
- key techlogies to move and virtualise are identity management and fast networks - but uni networks actually very good
- networks more than capable of dealing with most tasks
- commoditization solves local provision - byod by default
- value proposition lies around engagement and facilitation.
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