Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Interview
The Successful CIO: Vision, Focus, and Execution
2/28/2007
The fact of life about IT is that as the resource needs grow--for example, when you have to upgrade to a new course management system--the IT costs are increasing more rapidly than budget increases. That's a reality that CIOs have to deal with.
CT: So what can CIOs do to reduce the gap between IT costs and budgets?
CAMP: There are ways, big opportunities.... CIOs are going to have to collaborate more. For example, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Wayne State needed massive bandwidth to enable research that those institutions were doing together or were seeking support from the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health to do. So the three universities signed a collaboration agreement to build a regional optical network in Michigan. The Michigan LamdaRail lit up 770 miles of acquired dark fiber--none of us could have done this ourselves. But the research demand was dramatic, so we invested together in the future. By sharing the costs of an expensive resource, we were able to reduce costs for each of us. I think there's going to be a lot more collaboration going on, to reduce IT costs as well as share expertise.
CT: Leaving your CIO position after so many years was certainly a big transition for the university as well as for you. What did you do to ease the transition for the university?
CAMP: I established a strategic planning commission and kicked that group off before I left. Nothing is strategic unless it gives you a competitive advantage. So the commission is looking at the ways that IT can "leapfrog" and provide Wayne State with that competitive advantage. And technology can advance strategic goals, but a CIO is going to have to be smart about it, and he or she does not do this alone. So I wrote to my president about what to look for in a CIO. The role of the CIO is not about technology, but how you achieve important goals and objectives through technology. The CIO must have not only a vision about how IT can have a positive impact on teaching, learning, and research, but also the ability to focus on that vision and translate it into effective action within the IT organization. A successful CIO has a vision, can focus on it, and execute.
CT: And in general, how can universities help CIOs be successful?
CAMP: The CIO role is so important and so strategic for a university, that the CIO must sit around a president's cabinet and be a key part of strategy activities at a university. If you look at the Educause Core Data study, you'll see that across colleges and universities, about 50 percent of the senior IT leaders sit at a president's cabinet, and 50 percent don't. You've got a 50-50 split right now. I happen to believe that's going to change because it must. What CIOs do with their responsibilities and their influence across the campus and schools and colleges is so important, that person has to be tied in at the highest level of the senior executives. And I think that universities that do this are advantaged, and the universities that don't are disadvantaged.
Recommended Reading
- Security Researchers Uncover Spring Framework Vulnerability
Software frameworks are enjoying enormous popularity these days among a range of developers. It's popularity well earned; frameworks provide powerful tools for building more flexible and less error-prone applications. They generally enhance developer productivity with out-of-the-box functionality. And they can free developers to focus on features instead of common coding tasks.
- 3PAR Server Arrays Integrate Fat-to-Thin Processing
Utility storage provider 3PAR has announced the release of the 3PAR InServ T400 and T800 Storage Servers. The new hardware is built on the company's third-generation InSpire architecture, featuring the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC with integrated fat-to-thin processing.
- CUNY, Red Hat, Intel To Launch Open Source Test Center
City University of New York (CUNY) is partnering up with Intel and Red Hat to launch a new software institute dedicated to open source software. The center, New York City Open Source Solutions Lab, based out of the CUNY Graduate Center, will serve as a test bed for government IT professionals in New York who are working with open source solutions.
- Adobe Makes ColdFusion 8 Free for Students, Educators
Adobe has made its ColdFusion 8 Web development platform free for educators and students. The offer is available for all public and private accredited K-12 schools and colleges and universities.
- Gathering Your Digital Pencils for Back-to-School
Trent Batson considers a list of back-to-school resources for Web 2.0.
- Tips for Getting Started with Educational Wikis
Campus Technology speaks with wiki expert Stewart Mader, who discusses choosing between commercial and open source wiki products, getting started with a wiki, and why Wikipedia is the single biggest stumbling block to wikis in higher education.
