For any institution looking to shift enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to the cloud, big savings can be achieved--but only if the school has properly prepped "before" negotiations begin. These three steps can help: (1) Mop up the mess first; (2) Understand the true costs for services; and (3) Calculate the cost of transition.

In today's high-pressure IT world, almost every opportunity comes hidden inside a problem. And when it comes to "greening" a data center, the problems can be especially daunting, given institutional inertia, budgetary concerns, politics, and more. For CIOs looking to notch up a win with a leaner, greener data center, the key to success often lies…

Colleges and universities are swimming in an ever-widening sea of data. Human beings and machines together generate about 2.5 "quintillion" (10[superscript 18]) bytes every day, according to IBM's latest estimate. The sources of all that data are dizzyingly diverse: e-mail, blogs, click streams, security cameras, weather sensors, social networks,…

With the widespread digitization of art, photography, and music, plus the introduction of streaming video, many colleges and universities are realizing that they must develop or purchase systems to preserve their school's digitized objects; that they must create searchable databases so that researchers can find and share copies of digital files;…