The Tower and the Cloud: Higher Education in the Age of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is currently enjoying what Gartner describes as the peak of heightened expectations. What appears to be emerging is industrial-scale computing—a standardized and network-accessible infrastructure for delivering computing power, network bandwidth, data storage and protection, and services. Industrial-scale computing, together with widespread consumerization of IT services, begs the question, Is this the end of the middle? This session will examine the role of "enterprise" IT in the future and also raise the bigger question, What will become of all of our intermediating institutions?