JISC-funded Study of Early Adopters of Cloud Computing and Shared Services

The FEAST report, an overview of the adoption of shared services and cloud computing in universities, which was funded by JISC and has been published recently, is worth a read.

HE has an excellent record in shared services eg purchasing consortia, JANET, UCAS. However many in-house activities are perceived to offer competitive advantage.

The report is aimed and written for VCs, Finance directors etc.

Text copied from the JISC web-page:

Purpose

To conduct a study to identify, explore, document and analyse examples of large-scale shared services and cloud computing implementations for core administrative and related academic systems across universities and colleges in theUK and globally.

To produce models and high quality guidance materials on effective practice around shared services and cloud computing planning and implementation in further and higher education aimed at different stakeholder groups.

Description

This study collated details from more than 250 different projects across the HE sector globally to demonstrate good examples of common frameworks and mutual cooperation, shared services and cloud computing initiatives. 80+ examples relevant to the Further and Higher Education sector (UK or internationally) have been been documented in vignettes and 5 specifically interesting examples have been expanded in to detailed case studies to illustrate the lessons and pitfalls of each project.