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Insight Series: Education Leaders On...

The Changing Landscape of IT Delivery and Consumption in Education

The cloud is altering the IT infrastructure in education, changing the way schools deliver and consume IT services. At the center of this new infrastructure is the network. No longer just “plumbing” in the infrastructure, the network is now a strategic asset. As more and more IT functions, including software and platform, are offered as a cloud service, the network infrastructure that securely and reliably enables the consumption of these services becomes increasingly important.

Meet the Contributors

Michael A. Duhr, network engineer, Columbia College Chicago (Illinois);

Michael A. Duhr

Columbia College Chicago (Illinois)

 

Network Engineer
Vance Gregory, director of technology, Fort Smith Public Schools (Arkansas);

Vance Gregory

Fort Smith Public Schools (Arkansas)

 

Director of Technology
Klara Jelinkova, senior associate vice president and chief information technology officer (CITO), University of Chicago (Illinois);

Klara Jelinkova

University of Chicago (Illinois)

 

Senior Associate Vice President and Chief Information Technology officer (CITO)
Jim Peterson, technology director, Bloomington School District 87 (Illinois);

Jim Peterson

Bloomington School District 87

(Illinois)

 

Technology Director
Michael Shepherd, sales business develop manager, Cisco’s Public Sector Organization;

Michael Shepherd

Cisco’s Public Sector

Organization

 

Sales Business Develop Manager

Featured Questions

  1. Learning and instruction have expanded beyond the traditional classroom, in the form of flipped classrooms, MOOCs and distance learning models. As your infrastructure evolves to support these new approaches, what role will cloud services play in this environment? What changes do you envision for your network?
  2. BYOD adoption continues to drive the change in IT consumption. How do you ensure that your security policies are protecting you against potential threats across multiple clouds and multiple devices? How do you create policies that safeguard the network and student privacy while still fostering a culture of open and collaborative learning?
  3. Telepresence and web conferencing technologies have opened the doors for new opportunities in collaborative learning and instruction. What are some ways schools can use these technologies to enrich the learning experience? How are you acquiring these capabilities to create a collaborative environment?
  4. A growing number of schools are moving – or planning a move – to a hybrid cloud environment. What do campuses need to know and plan for as they develop their public-private cloud strategy?
  5. What are the top challenges that schools face when preparing their networking infrastructure for a cloud environment? What recommendations or best practices do you have for these schools?

About Cisco

Cisco Systems For schools and higher education leaders who seek innovative approaches to transforming education, Cisco’s Connected Learning portfolio of products, services, and solutions enables you to improve student outcomes, increase efficiency, enhance safety and security and expand research capabilities. The end-to-end systems approached offered by Cisco VXI delivers desktop virtualization and virtual workspaces that provide a superior desktop, voice and video user experience. Cisco VXI reduces risk and simplifies deployments through a validated and fully tested system that combines data center, network and collaboration architectures together with services, support and partner technologies.