The IT Service Organization for a Post-Enterprise World — from educause.edu by Tracy Schroeder
The technology-service marketplace is increasingly focused either below the enterprise (on the consumer) or above the enterprise (on the cloud). In the space between the consumer and the cloud, the post-enterprise IT organization can make key contributions, channeling technical possibilities in service to the institutional mission.

Excerpt:

Put another way, the challenges facing higher education have prompted some faculty and staff to say to me: “I don’t want you [the IT organization] to be a service provider in this situation; I don’t even know what I want, or what is possible. I need you to create something with me.” This is not a rejection of the IT group as a service organization but, rather, an outgrowth of becoming one.

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Finally, colleges and universities need innovative visions for how information technology can enable new forms of teaching, learning, and research. The work of curing the cost disease, appealing to the student-consumer, forging new collaborations, and creating new business models, all while improving learning outcomes, is both exciting and daunting. Institutional leaders need help in identifying the possibilities that exist today and in charting the technology trends that might be leveraged to create and disseminate knowledge in the future.

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We live and work in the midst of significant transformations in higher education and the IT organizations that support it. These transformations are being driven by the forces of consumerization, the escalating cost of higher education, new possibilities presented by cloud computing at scale, and dramatic expansions in the quantity and diversity of relevant data—as well as our capacity to analyze that data. Higher education IT teams will need to evolve into more mature service organizations, skilled in governance, project, and service management and able to deliver reliable and cost-effective utility services, next-generation security infrastructure, process reengineering and data analysis, and innovative visions. The need to provide enhanced capabilities in these areas will require efficiencies in infrastructure, administrative systems, and technology support, reshaping the IT organization.