Traditionally, the culture of ‘conservatism’ and the ‘governance’ or ‘independence’ of Universities has created high cost of sales. Each University has ended up building a unique architecture and level of experience and such complexity means services and processes have tended to be tailored/bespoke at every different institution and resulted in silo based approach often creating an over engineered environment that results into higher cost of ownership.

Now, more than ever before, the IT department in Higher Education sector is increasingly under pressure to explore how best to utilize the emerging trends in technology to lower costs and broaden student base.

In this article we take a look at some of the common challenges faced by the IT department of the Universities across the globe and how imbibing some of the recent technology trends can help mitigate some of the issues around data standards, governance and lack of interoperability.

Higher Education Sector – Typical IT Challenges
* Current IT landscape at many universities comprise of set of large, disparate, complex applications built on product stacks procured from multiple vendors that lack strategic business alignment or allow easy exchange of information, knowledge and collaboration both within & outside.
* New anti-terrorism legislations require Universities in many of the developed nations to be able to monitor international students who have obtained a Visa to attend an educational course. IT systems in Universities are not currently geared up for Identity Federation to prevent duplicating such checks every time students change universities.
* Given the proliferation of virtual learning environments and need for online learning options spanning across multiple time zones, there is increasing need for IT to provision for high availability systems to support 24 by 7 window.Also there is an ever-growing need to embrace newer technology channels that provide seamless and personalized experience for student and faculty interactions.