How Universities Can Prepare IT Teams For Cloud?

As higher educational institutions undergo a digital transformation, technology leaders are on the run to close its knowledge gaps by various methods.

FREMONT, CA: For universities, cloud-based services can provide high computing efficiencies at a marginal price. According to a survey conducted by Meritalk, more than 60 percent of higher education institutions are in queue to commence integration with cloud computing into its general IT strategies. The IT teams are now being pressurized to renew skills and also learn new tricks around building, maintaining, and securing cloud solutions on higher education campuses to meet the growing demands. 

Even if an entire school’s information is not on a cloud, the security, operations, and networking teams should be updated with the cloud services. Every time a faculty or a researcher uses the university login to work on a project or to create a document in the cloud, it is considered to be the university’s business officially. Hence, the cloud solution is of the utmost importance for data protection.    

According to the recent survey by Robert Half International on tech hiring trends in the U.S., 90 percent of IT leaders in the EdTech domain have started working towards equipping their staff with new skills. Some ways to bring about awareness and to provide a boost to the team are: 

• Maximize Exposure: A rotational system of working can be set up to provide practical experience to all the employees, especially in cloud-related tasks. 

• Build Right Connections: With the provision of brown bag lunches, interactions among other colleges, IT teams and guest speakers, employees gets peer-to-peer learning opportunities. For large universities, IT meet-ups or conferences with a couple of other institutions in a periodical fashion might help.

• Enrichment of Resources: Share guides, policies, processes, FAQs, and other documents in an online repository for reference when necessary. 

• Investment Rerouted to Training: Certification programs, conferences, online training, and other creative avenues offer the staff a base to build on.

• Give Due Recognition: By providing one of the staff members the recognition to advance in cloud expertise, the member will become accountable for development.

• Inspire and Motivate: By inspiring the staff, they are motivated to embrace career development as well as to work harder and diligently towards the development of the institutions.