| | October 20168CIOReviewCloud Computing and the CIO--Recasting the Education SectorThe education sector is undoubtedly getting progressively "cloudier," as those of us in higher education IT identify the many ways moving to the cloud might benefit our students, faculty, staff, and our institutions. One area key to our academic mission is the breadth of opportunities that cloud services provide to facilitate collaboration, whether that is among students, faculty, and staff within one institution; among peers across many institutions; or even farther a field. Cloud-hosted data sets and services can provide ready access from many locations, without some of the complications and risks of opening secure in-house institutional resources to a wider audience. This is certainly not to say that all cloud services are inherently more secure than their on-premise equivalents, but the options available present interesting opportunities, including the ability to integrate data from many different cloud services to produce even richer and more informative data analyses.Along with this increased availability comes an ability to establish new student and faculty research projects more rapidly, perhaps at a lower cost, or even offer the ability to embark on projects that were previously considered implausible. The cloud allows the rapid provisioning of high-powered computation resources, customizable for many different functions, in a way that can be achieved less expensively than the cost and time associated with establishing equivalent server hardware on site (especially if you only need to use that infrastructure for a few weeks). With Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings, for example, less expertise is often needed in the underlying infrastructure and systems, which can increase the accessibility to resources for students and faculty alike.This shift in approach can be leveraged by educational institutions. Although moving to cloud-based resources will not reduce the number of employees needed by IT groups, it offers the opportunity to re-deploy the workforce and its skill sets to focus more on academic mission while perhaps spending less time on some of the traditional, highly specific, technically-focused hardware-based tasks. As we see more job titles like "Cloud Architect" appearing in higher education, we also see benefits and efficiencies gained in standardizing platforms­something the cloud can do very well.Along similar lines, cloud computing provides an unparalleled ability to test ideas, create "sandboxes," and perform highly By Dr. Dave Robinson, Chief Information Technology Officer, Grinnell CollegeIN MY OPINIONDr. Dave Robinson
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