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2. The New IT

The New IT is all about implementing the right IT for a strong strategic base, optimal & efficient IT operations,

and most importantly, for enabling strongly empowered campus constituents. Paraphrasing Krishna

Subramanian, VP of product marketing for cloud platforms at Citrix Systems, talks in terms of the New IT more

generically as IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS): With ITaaS, the focus of IT shifts from building and operating enterprise IT

and applications to aggregating and delivering BOTH in-house and third-party cloud services which are also

BOTH business and IT services including enterprise cloud-native and mobile applications.

The New IT is comprised of the following five parts:

IT Infrastructure

IT Enterprise Architecture - Organization and Technology Union

Data/Information Management - Redefining the College/University using new data, Big Data, and

technologies

Application Strategy and Integration - Boosting agility with a seamless applications strategy

IT security, privacy and risk

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A. IT Infrastructure

Aging IT Infrastructure and facilities, combined with fierce competition and savvy, empowered campus end users, will lead to IT executives and their team to retool their approach toward IT infrastructure. Furthermore, ITS departments are continually being challenged to keep up with demand, to keep up with increased infrastructure capacity and services, be required to have more agility, nimbleness, with decreased time-to delivery, all the while trying to reduce costs. This may be a challenging time, but it also presents opportunities to deploy innovative infrastructure services that enable mobile access, BYOD (bring your own device), and incorporate streamlined processes in order to improve IT services, availability, and utilization for organizational success.

i. Reallocating infrastructure spend from CapX to OpX innovation

The new IT of the College/University will get more from their IT budgets by reevaluating existing

cost structures and redirecting noncore expenditures toward technology initiatives. The

organization will reap greater rewards by investing in infrastructure innovations that support

college/university goals, rather than being stuck in the past with business as is. With CSP and

cloud based approaches enabling empowered end users, decentralized IT, and over lower IT costs

and risks, IT budgets will move from CapX (capital expenditure) budgets to OpX (operational

expenditure) budgets for technology initiatives and innovations thereby lowering risk, overhead,

costs, and time to implementation.

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ii. Lowering IT costs through new technology

CSP and cloud based approaches allow for an IT infrastructure built for flexibility will be critical to

growth for the college/university. In many cases, the new CIO and new ITS Dept. team will

improve student, faculty, researcher, and staff satisfaction, increase speed to market, and gain

competitive advantage by adopting a dynamic IT infrastructure that includes not only new facility

designs for power and cooling savings, but also allowing entire infrastructure to move fully off

campus and available on demand resulting in the organization only paying for IT that is actually

consumed. This will simultaneously transition the college/university into a fully service-based,

BYOD, near fully operational model with streamlined operations that best serve students, faculty,

researchers, and staff.

iii. Optimizing technology services mix in order to improve stakeholder experience

The cloud, mobile technology, BYOD, ITaaS, social media, Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT), the

Internet of Everything (IoE), and other emerging technologies are forcing campus executives to

deal with higher demand for both employee and student satisfaction. And, the first step in doing

more for less today is optimizing the mix of college/university technology investments in the

organization’s hybrid private/public CSP approach.

iv. Building an IT infrastructure that will respond to changing priorities

Technology has moved to the forefront for the entire college/university as the new CIO balances

ongoing business requirements with preparedness for new opportunities. But technological

investment is futile if the next generation of college/university workers and tech specialists are

not ready to continue building the college/university infrastructure. End users and the new IT

Organization personnel need to be well versed in the use of tools and services available.

v. Making smart decisions about IT infrastructure

The new IT Organization and end users together must make new investments wisely. Working on

an ongoing basis, all IT personnel along with students, faculty, researchers, and staff, will

collaborate on internal considerations and third party/cloud service options that must be weighed

in order to ensure the right assets are put in place at the lowest cost for the best service solution.

In order to build IT infrastructure that will function with high availability and user satisfaction for

our tomorrow, the new CIO, new IT Organization, AND end users will together make the right IT

decisions and provisions today.

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vi. Optimizing disaster recovery plans

Colleges/universities industry wide are now under pressure to maintain operations while

contending with increased regulations and intensifying competitive pressures. And with global

web interactions now taking place around the clock, any down time courts the risk of lost

enrollment or opportunities, possible breaches of regulatory or contractual obligations and

tarnished brand name or reputation. Now is the time to invest in flexible and highly available CSP

measures that ensure the college/university can weather the unexpected.

B. IT Enterprise Architecture - Organization and Technology

Union

The college/university executive team faces relentless pressure from campus constituents to pick up the pace of service rollouts, pivot to adapt to ever shifting higher education market changes and expand locally, nationally, and internationally. Campus executive and IT leaders must sync their strategies to achieve the speed and agility required to meet these expectations and at the same time remain focused on the cost effectiveness of IT initiatives.

It can be challenging to bridge gaps between organizational service units and the IT department and to unite them around a shared vision that powers the college/university. In other words, colleges/universities must merge academics, research, and services units with technology, and become empowered to grow the organization and innovate.

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i. Technology Strategy

Here, you will want and need to scope the college/university objectives over no longer than a

three year span and determine how information technology will either support or help drive the

organization’s goals.

ii. Technology Operating Model Design

Help re-design the technology operating model for including solution and disciplined (ITIL, Agile,

DevOps) processes, management, and governance operating models, along with career path and

skills re-design, to support the campus' unique needs. A sourcing strategy will also need to be

incorporated in order to bring all the new IT and processes online and available to the

college/university students, faculty, researchers, and staff. The new CIO and IT Organization will

work directly with college and university students, faculty, researchers, staff, and executives in

developing strategies to fill gaps and plan collaboratively for the future.

iii. Technology Innovation, Ideation and Prototyping

Develop an emergent a strategy framework that compliments the college/university deliberate

strategy of longer term goals and objectives. For the emergent strategy framework, create agile

and nimble processes to identify, prioritize and plan for technology breakthrough ideas and

prototypes and quickly evaluate business relevance, market impact for decisive pivot points.

Cultivate the culture and capabilities that will enable the organization to achieve continuous, quick

and agile innovation.

iv. Technology Investment and Business Case Planning

For the college deliberate strategy, build the business case for a technology strategy, create cost

models and outline the expected benefits for the goals, objectives, projects identified therein..

Create summary/brief of these for campus executives, divisions, department chairs, supervisors,

and leaders. This will help guide emergent strategy decisions and pivots.

v. Enterprise Architecture Blueprint Design

Create an organization-driven technology master plan that maps out the college/university

services, IT services, processes, KPIs/metrics, applications, information, integration, infrastructure,

and security components needed to deliver the college/university vision.

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C. Data/Information Management - Redefining the

College/University using new data, Big Data, and

technologies

The speed at which large amounts of varying data now change, demands evolving information management (IM)

techniques. This means that a farsighted approach to data governance, enterprise information, data collection,

system design, and change management is paramount to mastering expanding information archives and internal

and external data sources. Cooperation among many college/university constituents is also essential, because

when legacy systems, new technologies, Big Data, and diverse stakeholders work together, campus leaders have

the data and information necessary to confidently formulate well-informed responses to emerging opportunities.

Conversely, information that is inaccessible or is silo-ed, when needed is like having no information at all.

i. Aligning information with college/university objectives

Information management helps colleges/universities achieve and maintain agility in their day-

to-day professional decisions, whether these are strategic or operational. When information

management is aligned with college/university objectives, the quality, timing and impact of

organizational decisions will be significantly improved with lower cost and minimal disruption to

people and processes.

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ii. Turning data to insight

The continuing growth of data creates opportunities that were not possible only a few years ago.

New sources of data and new classes of technologies will provide insights that drive competitive

advantage, improved teaching/learning, enhanced researching, increased enrollment, etc.

Information management facilitates and enables the transformation of complex data to insight

and advantage for decision makers at all levels of the organization. This is data becomes

information that cannot be ignored and much be acted upon.

iii. Leveraging technology to gain competitive advantage

Information investments will be improved to harness the analytical capabilities those systems

will provide, which in turn enables an organization to improve the collection, management and

analysis of data for better decision making

iv. Using knowledge assets to reduce risk and build value

From information risk management and regulatory compliance issues (accreditation, FERPA,

HIPPA, etc.) to unpredictable crises, uncertainty is rife when a college/university invests in new

products, services, and processes. But analytics that monitor, appraise, and manage risk on an

ongoing basis will improve the quality and precision of college/university tactics, Institutional

Research (IR), and risk-management decisions alike.

a. Big Data: A new way to think about data – and a new way of doing business by thinking big, really big

Big Data (Academic/Learning Analytics, Research, Administrative, internal and

external etc. based data and information) is about much more than data. It

represents a new way of conducting campus business – one that is driven by data-

based decision-making processes. Leveraging Big Data capabilities, large volumes of

varied sources of data – both internal and from third-parties – will deliver

“intelligence at the moment” - insight and intelligence derived from fast moving

data sets will help inform split second strategy decisions, spur innovation, inspire

new college/university: academics, research areas, student services; enhance

student relationships, improve enrollment, uncover fraud, bolster operations, and

build competitive advantage.

Higher Ed organizations must:

Learn how to capture, interpret and apply Big Data – learning how to establish Big Data processes that boost innovation, yield prompt campus solutions and provide the timely foresight needed to capitalize on opportunity. Learning how to pinpoint practicable third-party Big Data, as well as learning how to develop the

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college/university infrastructure, data provisioning and analytics in order to create pilots that explore how Big Data and the benefit to the college/university.

Develop strategies to capture Big Data advantages – need to develop a road map to identify the capability and architecture modifications needed in the college/university infrastructure and processes in order to fully realize the Big Data advantage. Creating a cohesive data governance and information strategy that supports both traditional and Big Data business intelligence demands, and control Big Data risks with new risk and governance structures, processes and protocols.

Design and construct sustainable Big Data, BI (Business Intelligence), Research Based, and DSS (Decision Support Systems, like Executive Dashboards, Enrollment Management, Student Early Warning Systems) solutions - providing the organization with the data provisioning and analytics resources needed to help build a sound Big Data infrastructure and the wide-range of data crunching/presentation applications. Designing a Big Data platform architecture, drafting a blueprint for competitive vendor and tool selection is required. When needed, to be able to integrate new data sources into the organization and foster creativity with an innovation BI/DSS data warehouses.

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D. Application Strategy and Integration - Boosting agility and

nimbleness with a seamless applications strategy

Campus executives will be looking to transform existing college/university processes and information system investments to create advantages like greater agility, nimbleness, world class student, faculty, research, administrative services, and cost containment. Successful colleges/universities have all of their divisions and departments partner & collaborate with the ITS dept., using SDE/SD* (Software Defined Everything). SDE will streamline processes, integrate the latest multi-channel solutions (including for mobile devices and BYOD) and enable real-time visibility into KPIs, and critical decision metrics.

Seamless application integration with technologies such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Process Management (BPM) will reap considerable benefits. Simultaneously, quality management rigor and college/university-wide security and audit compliance practices will be integrated within the development lifecycle to achieve continuous improvement.

i. Application Architecture

The Application Architecture will align with college/university and operational requirements

through the careful design of information systems. Important aspects include application

optimization, strategic integration of custom and/or packaged solutions like research tools,

teaching/learning technologies, student information systems, administrative/financial ERP,

recruitment/enrollment systems. The new CIO and new IT Organization leads in collaboration

with college/university division and department leads will roadmap development and architecture

centers of excellence.

ii. Application Development & Integration

End-to-end Application Development & Integration will consider user experience, mobility, BYOD,

and Internet technology integrations, with SOA, BPM/BAM (business activity monitoring)

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integrations. Deployment and readiness planning, development management, and reducing cost

through a global delivery model are key. Also needed, is the real-time integration to external

information sources will enhance college/university information and provide a robust digital

experience for all students, faculty, researchers, and staff.

iii. Quality Management & Testing

College/university-wide quality management and testing of IT/business solutions, from strategy

through implementation, will improve quality, reduce compliance challenges, and lower delivery

risk. Quality Management & Testing will encompass defining test management, defining test

strategy, test development, test execution and analysis. This is built into agile product/service

development, DevOps, and ITIL practices. A Center of Excellence with a metrics-based approach

will help assess and enhance the college/university testing maturity of people, processes,

technology, and governance.

E. IT security, privacy and risk

In an age of global collaboration and accelerating change, competitive advantage can be gained or lost in an instant. Higher Education ecosystems and the business processes therein depend increasingly on data/information—and its security—everywhere teaching, learning, research, administrative, and community service is conducted around the world. At the same time, organization and information security leaders are becoming increasingly aware that cybersecurity threats are more aggressive, more unrelenting, and more effective. Forward-thinking leaders recognize a strategic opportunity to extract more value from security investments, and in embedding security perspectives into the culture of the college/university to sustain and build competitive edge and high valued services.

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i. Reducing the impact of cybersecurity breaches

Now more than ever, colleges/universities need to recognize and respond to security breaches,

effectively manage hacker activity, and integrate security capabilities with business needs and

objectives. Being proactive and anticipating what might be in store is chief to minimizing the

effects of possible breaches.

ii. Spending wisely on enterprise-wide IT security

Risk-management programs require effective governance, accurate cost/benefit analysis, and

competent execution of IT security initiatives in order to positively influence college/university

constituents and drive change. In order to achieve these goals, IT security programs must exceed

business expectations and reduce overall information risk. Spending on IT security will be as

effectively managed as it is for any other college/university business unit and service.

iii. Protecting the College/University brand integrity

Robust and thorough security will reduce the risk of compromise by protecting the confidentiality,

integrity, availability, authenticity, and non-repudiation of college/university information. To

further guard against future incidents, campus IT leads will: 1) reevaluate existing business

continuity and disaster-recovery programs establishing agile, nimble, and flexible CSP solutions;

and 2) proactively manage technical vulnerabilities and remedy identified breach points.

iv. Enabling cost-effective regulatory compliance

Increased emphasis on IT security, privacy and data protection is prompting local, state, and

national regulators and industry groups to enforce new regulations. Now, colleges/universities

must protect the data and information entrusted to them as well as allocate spending to comply

with this growing number of complex requirements (FERPA, HIPAA, PCI, and more).

v. Improving IT access and asset-management protocols

Identity/Access Management (“IdM” or “IdAM”) efficiently provisions and manages users' ability to obtain appropriate access and rights to services and information. IdM will also enable cost savings and improved efficiencies while advancing key business initiatives and services through fast, secure, efficient, and effective access to business services and IT services.

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What does the New IT security look like? Here is an example:

(RED indicates protection/encryption measure in place.)

1 – Storage data encryption – protecting all data within the datacenter 2 – Channel Encryption – protecting access to all data in the datacenter 3 – VS – VShield – Firewalls between VMs plus VM AV protection + VM DLP (data loss prevention) rules/policies – these rules, policies, etc travel with the VM regardless of where/when it is at; limit VMs to specific to campus, group of campuses, groups/depts, and/or down to specific people (for example with a custom VDI image) – VMs and images are all/also encrypted 4 – VM DLP policies and agents 5 – VDI Policies – DLP (data loss prevention) rules (remove PI data elements like DOB and SS#) + no USB port use, printing restrictions, etc. 6 – Internal - LAN – 5 layer/channels of protection - SSL; HTTPS; network isolation with VDI only access + policies; Enable mobile and BYOD access for all with wireless guest SSID for BYOD limited to VDI only – anything that is BYOD can only connect as a guest to a specific app/image. VDI images are assigned access to specific applications that end users need for their college/university work with user credentials created and maintained via IdM regimens that efficiently provisions and manages users' ability to securely obtain appropriate access and rights to services, information, and data 7 – External – VPN (virtual private network) + LAN restrictions as per the prior point. 8 – Firewall, IDS, and IPS and each and every Internet/LAN demarcation IMPORTANT TO POINT OUT THAT THE DATACENTER DEPICTED HERE NEED ***NOT *** BE

LOCAL

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F. The New IT at Your Campus

From what you have read so far and with many buzz words that we’re all hearing about you’re probably either

very enthusiastic about the New IT or very confused about the New IT. Regardless, the big question that

college/university executives need to address is “how to get my campus from the Old IT and into the New IT?”

Let’s start with the basics. The New IT is all about “software defined everything” (also known as SDE or SD*) and

makes the physical datacenter location irrelevant. Entire datacenter “infrastructure” can be setup and run,

using software. Everything from the storage, using control/data planes, servers running many and multiple

shared virtual machines, and the network (layer 4 and above on the TCP/IP stack) is all software. Basically, the

same software, tools, and applications are used in both the local campus private cloud and within the partner

cloud service provider(s) to quickly provision entire datacenter infrastructure on-demand or automatically when

needed. It is important to note that the critical success factor in operating in a SDE private/public cloud

environment is using the same tools at both the campus and CSP which will allow your campus’ New ITS

Organization to automatically, quickly, correctly, securely, and efficiently provision applications and services.

This will save the overall college/university time, money, and risk as well as increase the velocity of the

organization at which it provides business and IT services. The time velocity is on the order of magnitude going

from months and even years, down to just weeks. The money velocity allows the college/university to avoid

large capital expenditure hits and move to very affordable, predictable, annual operating cost expenditures. The

risk is low-to-no risk which allows the college/university to be able to experiment, fail, retry, and succeed faster

and more often.

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Now let’s look at this from a higher level and see what’s happening at the Internet-wide perspective of things. If

you recall from the Introduction podcast section, in general, the future looks to be very cloudy. Lots of campus

private clouds and external cloud service providers with no real strategy established. The cloudy forecast

however is a good thing if addressed in a right/proper strategic way. What your campus’ New IT needs, is to be

aligned with a CSP that matches your local campus IT tools (now) and infrastructure (in the very near future).

The need to match tools now is that your campus can, at the very least, be able to share (push/pull) data with

your SaaS providers and have external off-campus systems and services with the same data and in-synch with

your internal systems and services. For example, today/now at SUNY Cobleskill, the HRMS (health records

management system – Medicat) is hosted externally and we share information to and from our campus Banner

SIS (student information system) via stored procedures and available APIs. In the future, the local campus

datacenter infrastructure will need to match with our CSP(s) infrastructure setup of tools and applications for a

hybrid private-public cloud approach. These tools will need to work between and/or among multiple clouds

(campus and CSP partners). The tools will automate and quickly provision/de-provision (push/pull) entire

datacenter infrastructure on-demand or automatically when needed. This allows the campus to simultaneously

address many needs. For example, be able to quickly implement applications & services; establish low cost,

highly reliable, highly available DR/BC facilities; have on-demand flexible services capacity during peak utilization

periods and more. The common, automated tools are used to manage and move VMs/infrastructure using

(ideally) a central dashboard, common APIs, common SDE technologies and encapsolators. This results in the

college/university being extremely agile and nimble, and become more competitive and successful while

operating at low(er) costs than having a single large, expensive datacenter on campus.

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Again, the big question that college/university executives (as well as the New IT Organization and the New CIO)

need to address is “how to get my campus from the Old IT and into the New IT?”; more specifically “Where do

we start?”

Thinking of this more from a college/university business management perspective, there is the existing campus

operations and services to offer and run, be responsive to customers, to serve students, students to teach,

research to conduct, etc. With IT, there is the two-part role technology plays, part one is to maintain the steady

state of the college/university and its current portfolio of business and IT services for existing operations, and

then part two is the role technology plays to grow the college/university and achieve its strategic goals and

objectives. To grow the college/university, is the job that the New IT will perform.

To repeat, the existing college/university IT portfolio is the current steady state part, where (today) there is a

good portion of IT resources that are devoted to run the college/university. The New IT where, in the very near

future, is where the college/university will bring on IT that will grow the college/university.

In the existing steady state, campus IT Organization and users have to be tremendously efficient with a high

level of business and IT service availability and user satisfaction. This will buy time for college/university to

address the New IT. So, college/university executives do not need to think of merging steady state IT and New

IT, but rather build a fence around old/existing IT and keep the steady state going as needed and then introduce

and incorporate New IT as needed and decided as per resource allocation choices by collaborations of cross-

functional college/university teams. The New IT is comparatively inexpensive for any college/university to buy

and put on campus. So rather than large capital expenditures, the New IT can be purchased very regularly and

affordably over time with operational funds/expenditures, which instantly results in keeping the New IT as

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always being operationally funded. Also, these cross-functional teams would be removing internal silos and

creating externally focused partnerships and opportunities. The teams would be creating the culture, the good

habit of regularly sharing organizational knowledge and working together in the uncovering of new

opportunities in learning, teaching, research, and service. With New IT and resources being very quick to deploy

and more affordable, innovation is both low cost and low risk and will be the regular habit practiced and

exploited to the fullest extent throughout the college/university.

In conclusion to this section on the New IT, The New IT addresses many college/university problems to be resolved (PTBR) and results to be obtained (RTBO). These are:

Allow for better IT/Business service governance

Being very ITIL compliant

Allow for better and optimal control of IT, costs (savings), and resources

Giving the college/university better security and auditability safety and compliance

Allow for the New IT Organization, New CIO and the entire college/university to be VERY proactive

Increase the time and velocity for the New IT Organization to be involved in innovative activities, tasks, and projects

Instill an agile development culture that involves end users/customers every step of the way

The quick provisioning of entire infrastructure with TEST, DEVELOPMENT, PRODUCTION, and other environments available to users and developers that help in the deployment of business and IT services

Enabling end user initiative/empowerment

Enabling faster, more reliable applications and services deployment In order for the New IT work, the New IT Organization will need to adopt new habits, new TOOLS and new SKILLS.

These will be covered in the “New IT Organization” section of this eBook.