Chicago, IL — NEIU CIO Sam Kann recently moved the university’s on-premise infrastructure to a hybrid cloud solution architected and managed by ServerCentral Turing Group (SCTG). The modernized infrastructure provides NEIU with the tech credibility it needs to attract students and faculty.
“We aren’t a data center. We’re a university,” Kann said.
“The value of the office of the CIO is in innovating and delivering revolutionary services — not solely worrying about the foundation upon which it is built.”
NEIU’s migration to a hybrid cloud was a strategic move that went far beyond the infrastructure benefits. It provides a foundation for students and facility to build amazing things of their own.
Additionally, switching CapEx to OpEx and adopting a pay-as-you-go billing model cut NEIU’s costs by 48% per month.
Before working with SCTG, students and faculty were relying on a 100 Mbps connection between the campuses, and to the internet.
“The infrastructure was definitely taking a beating,” Kann said. “Rather than a Band-Aid, we had to do a reset and think through how to fix all of this in a short amount of time.”
“Our goal was to provide scalability from the ground up — literally from the dark fiber in the ground up to the cloud,” said Jordan Lowe, SCTG CEO.
“Requirements will change, and by delivering a fully managed environment, we’re able to support today’s demands and tomorrow’s vision.”
The new NEIU hybrid cloud is fully automated, monitored 24/7 by SCTG and seamlessly connected to NEIU’s systems.
But not every application can make the move to cloud immediately — legacy systems need to continue in NEIU’s on-campus facilities until they can be rewritten.
To keep NEIU from having to devote resources to these systems, SCTG is delivering remote managed services to provide a fully managed hybrid architecture.
“Our biggest building block in this whole endeavor is student experience. Building that effectively would help NEIU with its enrollment, retention and graduations rates. The technology we are implementing with SCTG will help us get there sooner than later.”
NEIU has a cloud transformation roadmap for the next three years that it’s continually working toward.
“SCTG is working with us very closely. Both parties have insight into all aspects of NEIU, which will be invaluable when the cloud transformation is complete,” Kann said. “Our goal is to have all critical NEIU applications on the SCTG cloud by 2021.”
