SOLUTION BRIEF The Transformation of
Central IT in Higher Education

The Challenge

Higher education has accelerated its adoption of cloud computing over the past several years to shift to online or blended learning environments. The COVID-19 pandemic marked an even greater need to digitally transform education.

This fundamental shift to e-learning comes with significant administrative, financial and operational impacts, all of which highlights the underlying cost and operational inefficiencies that might exist within IT departments. Prior to the pandemic, it was common for large universities to have multiple colleges, academic departments, and offices making cloud-based decisions independently of one another. Now, as colleges and universities continue to transform education and scale out to public cloud, they need to shift to a centralized IT model.

The Transformation of Central IT

Central IT is regaining control by assuming the role of a cloud service broker (CSB). This transformation is not a simple task and might require campus IT staff to learn new skills and leverage new toolsets. A critical component of the higher education CSB role is partnering with the various departments and groups to coordinate a shared cloud strategy as part of building a cloud center of excellence. Once established, central IT can offer cloud services and infrastructure to the student body, faculty, research departments and administrators, and ultimately manage the institution’s multi-cloud environment.
 

How VMware can help

VMware Aria Cost™ powered by CloudHealth® helps academic institutions worldwide effectively scale and govern their multi-cloud environments while keeping costs under control. The platform provides complete visibility into cloud resources, enabling colleges and universities to improve collaboration across departments, boost campus IT efficiency, and maximize the return on their cloud investment..
 

Move faster in your cloud migration process

Assess and model your on-premises workloads for migration to the cloud of your choice, based on existing configuration or utilization, and understand the associated total cost of ownership.
 

Align business context to cloud data

Get granular visibility into your cloud environment by building dynamic business groups to view and analyze your data, and drive accountability to departments, projects and applications using chargeback and showback.
 

Optimize Resource Cost and Utilization

Identify opportunities to eliminate waste with custom rightsizing recommendations, and take advantage of cloud provider pricing discounts to reduce operational costs.
 

Centralize Cloud Governance

Drive consistent governance best practices throughout your institution by implementing policies that proactively alert stakeholders of violations and automate daily operations.

Learn more

See how VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth can enhance operational excellence as your institution scales out to public cloud. Start your free trial.

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