Website Maintenance Announcement – September 19–21
Activities begin at 6:00 PM CT on Friday, September 19 and continue through Sunday, September 21.
During this time, Product functionality will be unavailable
Website Maintenance Announcement – September 19–21
Activities begin at 6:00 PM CT on Friday, September 19 and continue through Sunday, September 21.
During this time, Product functionality will be unavailable
Higher education institutions are recognizing the indispensable role of digital transformation in retaining relevance and enhancing the student experience. As campus IT staff grapple with the pressures and challenges of this transformation, the integration of a converged, digitally advanced network emerges as a crucial solution to meet these objectives.
At a time of unprecedented change in higher education, those most affected by the quickening pace of digital transformation are the individuals who support campus IT infrastructure. If you’re on the front lines of academia’s IT revolution, you know that integrating disparate networks and lowering IT complexity would go a long way toward helping colleges and universities operate more efficiently in this competitive higher education market.
Many IT professionals have found that institutions need a reliable, manageable, efficient, unifying communications infrastructure—an integrated, digital campus nervous system, if you will. For that to happen, they need help untangling various networks that have popped up on campuses in recent years.
These campus IT professionals know that higher education institutions and their IT teams have reached a tipping point, wobbling beneath the weight and complexity of disparate IT networks, among them Wi-Fi®, IoT, 4G and 5G coverage, private wireless networks and more. The last thing they want to hear is a plan to roll out yet another network alongside all the others. Rather, what’s needed are solutions that will support more users, provide total campus connectivity from cable to cloud, enable innovation and support campus safety—with fewer networks to manage.
The post-secondary education sector is under tremendous pressure, and IT teams are feeling the stress as they search for solutions to improve teaching and learning, make campuses safer, enhance the experience of students and their families, and improve the efficiency of campus operations. Converging networks to create robust, adaptable, streamlined IT infrastructures can enable an institution to perform better in all of these areas, with fewer decisionmakers, less budget pressure, limited overlapping priorities and reduced support staff. Here’s how these challenges emerge in both academic and quality of life measurements.
Higher education institutions need to build digitally advanced networks with the capacity to improve themselves, using data and analytics to further tame complexity. AI tools, for example, enable root cause analysis to identify new efficiencies, greater visibility into the enterprise, and better reporting to support decision-making. Many colleges and universities, for example, have engaged in something of an amenities arms race in recent decades. To gain an edge in student recruitment, they build lavish dorms, gyms and dining halls to attract students. With this in mind, you can set your institution apart by using data provided by advanced networks to make informed decisions about managing the physical plant and by providing a seamless digital campus for all users.
In part two of this series, we will consider how advanced networks are improving campus safety and operations.