Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Focus
Should We Outsource IT?
10/20/2005
Smart schools are discovering that by freeing up IT to focus on core competiencies, outsourcing may be the great higher ed ‘enabler.’
AN INSTITUTION’S CORE COMPETENCIES are what make it unique and desirable—strengths that vary from school to school. Managing IT, however, may not always be one of them. That’s why institutions of higher education often look at ways to outsource some of their IT functions to outside experts.
At the University of Florida, for example, outsourcing certain IT-related projects has proved to be a smart decision. The university’s distance learning program serves up sophisticated video, text, animation, and simulation content via high-speed Internet connections to students at four campuses across Florida. Instead of trying to handle the complexity of supporting streaming video, the school decided four years ago to outsource the project to Nashville-based DigiScript (www.digiscript.com), explains Bill Riffee, associate provost for Distance, Continuing, and Executive Education.
“After we decided what resources we’d need to physically capture, host, and support [the project], we came to the conclusion that we didn’t have the infrastructure to provide the reliability we needed,” he says. His reasoning is a classic example of what often drives outsourcing in higher ed: “We didn’t have people on campus who got up in the morning thinking, ‘I need to capture lectures today and that’s my number one priority.’ They had 50 other things to do instead.”
So, DigiScript now supplies all the encoding, equipment, hosting, and support for the distance learning project, and four DigiScript employees work right on campus. Unlike Riffee’s staff, those employees do spend their days thinking about how best to handle complex streaming media projects. In fact, says Riffee, DigiScript has proved to be an excellent outsourcing partner, and not just vis-à-vis performance (the service vendor has maintained 99 percent uptime over four years, and has captured and served thousands of hours of lectures), but as a partner in helping to improve the process. For example, the university and DigiScript are now working together on a sophisticated keyword search function that can search videos for spoken words. “We believe we’re the first in the world to do it,” Riffee discloses.
The question is: Without its partnership with DigiScript, would the school be where it is in its distance learning program? “Without them, I’m not sure I would have pursued any of it,” Riffee says honestly.
In another example of strengthening a program by outsourcing to experts, Riffee cites the university’s non-traditional Doctor of Pharmacy program. “We outsource the marketing of that to a company that has developed a proprietary system that follows our students from initial interest to enrollment.” Through that company, they discovered an interesting fact:25 percent of potential students for the program take up to five years to enroll. Without an outside partner with professional data-tracking and marketing expertise, Riffee says, the school would have abandoned marketing efforts to those students. Instead, they now know to continue pursuing them.
Recommended Reading
- Sun, Stanford Working To Archive History
In May in San Francisco, experts from leading universities, libraries, and research institutions around the world met as part of an ongoing effort to address a pressing issue: archiving the world's history, right up to today.
- The Quilt Coalition Rolls Out XO Communications for High-Capacity Network Services
The Quilt, a coalition of 28 regional network organizations, has added XO Communications Services to its authorized vendor list. The Quilt represents 200 universities and thousands of other educational institutions across the United States. With this new relationship, Quilt members can purchase XO's high-speed IP transit and network transport services at competitive rates.
- Wimba Classroom 5.2 Expands Classroom Capture Support, Adds MP3 Downloads
At the NECC 2008 conference in Texas this week, Wimba launched a new version of Wimba Classroom, the virtual classroom component of the company's Collaboration Suite. The new 5.2 release expands options for classroom capture and adds a variety of other functional and ease of use features.
- Automation Chimera: Education Is Not Management
The lure of automating workflow online so human intervention is minimized is continually reinforced in the minds of higher education administrators by examples of automated campus systems such as financials, student information systems, and other enterprise systems. But what's good for management is not always good for learning.
- Cognos Releases BI Software for Linux-based IBM System z Mainframe
Cognos, which IBM acquired in January, has released an update to its business intelligence software that will run on the Linux operating system on IBM System z mainframes. IBM Cognos 8 BI was being developed by the two companies prior to the acquisition, but assimilation of Cognos into IBM accelerated development.
- Facebook and Collegiality: A Serendipitous Social Niche
Facebook is a way to greet a colleague as if she or he is on your own campus: a wave at a distance, a hello at the corner burrito place, a honk as you both leave the campus parking lot. Informal collegiality has been extended over the miles.
