An Exploration: Moving Your Enterprise to a Cloud Collaboration

The ever-costly hardware refresh cycle for administrative systems, coupled with budget cutbacks and IT audit findings, prompted five community colleges and their system offices to explore hosting or cloud computing as an alternative to independent systems at each of their campuses. Is collaborating in such a move to the cloud truly a viable option for lowering or maintaining current costs, both in real dollars and in staff hours? Can benefits be realized in terms of providing enhanced, more secure services, better redundancy, and increased availability and scalability? What issues arise when institutions collaborate in such a venture? Bring your own experiences and questions to this open dialogue where we'll create a working roadmap that you and others can follow.