In a June report, Educause ranked cloud computing third
on its list of the top IT issues facing higher education. Yet, a Gartner report predicts that 30% of organizations using software as a service, such as for e-mail, will
switch back from the cloud to on-premises systems in the next year.
In an article for Information Week, David Crain, assistant provost and chief information officer
at Southern Illinois University, explained some of the reasons why his
institution is headed back to on-premises service, at least for e-mail.
The university has been using cloud services for the
last two years, but Crain found that discounts the institution receives on most
technology made cloud services far more expensive than alternatives. He noted that
the downtime in cloud service has been “consistently and significantly higher
than we experienced with the on-premises solution.” Cloud security issues and
the amount of bandwidth consumed are also concerns.
Crain said schools looking into cloud services should
investigate private and community cloud offerings, costs, and the complexities
of integrating services. He also advised against signing a long-term contract
or using a cloud service without a strong service agreement.
