Cloud initiatives appeal to many campus technology leaders because they off-load services that are seen as commodities and free IT staff to work on higher-priority projects. As with any other application or infrastructure outsourcing, though, CIOs have to weigh potential risks and trade-offs.
Microsoft has revealed that Live@edu, the company's free, hosted collaboration and communications service for education, now has more than 22 million users, a 100 percent increase in the past year.
Oracle has released its Solaris 11 operating system (OS), which the company previewed last month at the Oracle OpenWorld 2011 event in San Francisco. Solaris 11 provides built-in virtualization capabilities for OS, network, and storage resources and is designed to run enterprise applications in private, hybrid, or public clouds. Oracle described it as the first fully virtualized, cloud OS.
DAM: Academics can now curate and maintain image collections that will complement their institution’s digital assets.
Cornell University has launched an on-demand research computing service available to scientists inside and outside of the institution.
Just as there are all kinds of real clouds--stratus, cirrus, cumulus--there are different types of computing clouds. The three primary cloud types are public, private, and hybrid.
The easiest way to understand the cloud is to think of it as a utility, like electricity.
How the cloud enables collaboration and efficient transmission of information at two universities.
A shift to cloud-based operations can help ensure high service availability and solid data recovery.
Every major cloud-based service builds reporting into its product, allowing colleges and universities to base decisions on solid data--and hopefully improve both their products and the customer experience.