Cloud

5 Ways Higher Ed Institutions Can Get the Most Out of a Cloud Assessment

Asking the right questions will help university IT departments avoid costly mistakes and find the cloud solutions they need.

Joel Keller

Joel Keller spent more than a decade in IT before becoming a full-time journalist. He has written for The New York Times, Parade and others.

Parents of a certain age have had to adapt to their kids doing most of their homework on a Chromebook instead of on paper for years now. When those kids matriculate to college, their reliance on technology only increases as hybrid learning structures, immersive environments and instruction on the tools they’ll use in the workforce — like artificial intelligence — are part of everyday life in higher education.

But the technology-first shift also shines a light on how dependent modern universities are on network-accessed apps and data for learning and administrative purposes.

To get more bang for their IT buck, many higher education institutions have been turning to cloud solutions to host applications and safeguard data. However, if you are a university technology leader looking to ascend to the cloud, you should start with a cloud assessment. This exercise can provide clarity around what cloud solutions would work best for your institution.

Whether you select an outside vendor to perform the cloud assessment or you do it internally, here are some tips for determining a potential cloud partner’s capabilities.

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An Effective Cloud Assessment Addresses Baseline Needs

One reason your college should do a cloud assessment when choosing vendors is to make sure the vendor can meet your data needs. If a single vendor can’t do everything you want, consider using multiple vendors.

To get a better sense of how a cloud vendor can best meet an institution’s needs, IT leaders must ask themselves several questions: Is the primary need to secure data and have it available 24/7? Does IT need to be able to quickly restore that data after a ransomware or other cyberattack? Does the college need a robust Software as a Service solution for apps that students and staff use? Having specific answers to these questions will go a long way toward narrowing down your possible list of vendors.

Determine If You Should Migrate Everything to the Cloud

While initially you might think you want to move all of your institution’s applications to the cloud, your cloud assessment could reveal that some apps need to remain onsite, for any number reasons. For example, you may need to keep backups in-house and have a second copy offsite. Knowing what you need to keep on-premises and what a cloud vendor can manage requires talking to any potential vendor about how they deal with hybrid setups.

DIVE DEEPER: Some universities are moving research computing to the cloud.

Know Your Security Vulnerabilities Before Moving to the Cloud

Short-staffed IT departments often don’t have the time or resources they need to address ever-changing cybersecurity needs. An honest assessment of your institution’s security vulnerabilities can help you decide what cloud services you want to examine and which vendors have the best tools to help you accomplish your security goals.

Learn About Your Cloud Vendor’s Business Practices

It’s hard to ensure the security of your data if you don’t know your vendor partner’s practices for securing that data. Therefore, it’s crucial that you have a detailed discussion with any potential vendor and ask pointed questions about how their approach can ensure your data will be safe and accessible.

For instance, it’s important to know where backups are located. This is especially important because colleges and universities must comply with federal, state and local regulations governing student data privacy. Also, delays could occur if backups are stored in a location that your systems cannot access.

Collaborate with Vendors to Make the Migration Process Smoother

Simply porting your current data set and applications from in-house servers to the cloud is one way to operate, but that may not address all of your security or data availability concerns. In fact, doing so may close off access to tools and applications that make things easier for students, administrators and IT staff. As part of the cloud assessment process, being open to vendors’ ideas and collaborating on changes and upgrades should minimize the need for incremental changes down the road.

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