Cause for panic or call to action?

By Monique Lucey

Back to school barely one month and many students are already playing catch up. The list of colleges and universities with H1N1 outbreaks continues to grow leaving many students behind the eight ball with missed assignments. Even in the most supportive academic environments, students will find the onus is on them to determine whether to go to class when they’re feeling sick or to stay in bed and risk the consequences of missed exams, assignments and valuable classroom time.

If we want students to take the necessary precautions to stop the spread of H1N1, then institutions need to enable access to learning anytime from anywhere.  According to Arne Duncan, Secretary of the US Department of Education, they are encouraging institutions to develop alternatives for the delivery of educational programs in the event of an H1N1 outbreak.  These alternatives could include creating or expanding distance learning opportunities, either through existing institutional capacity or through agreements with other institutions. Watch the video for more on the Secretary’s guidance on H1N1.

However, extending a campus network to remote and wireless users leaves systems open to security threats from both deliberate and unintentional activity as well as the vulnerability of bottlenecks and bandwidth hijacking. Privacy and confidentiality of student data and other information are increasingly at risk.

To tackle these challenges, higher education IT requires end-to-end visibility and control over the extended enterprise. Centralized network management enables IT to easily configure, deploy, manage, monitor, audit and report on the performance and security of their environments without having to go door-to-door to each device in the network.

However, it’s imperative that IT consider the following tips to be successful in their centralized network management deployments.

1. Assess the environment. Before IT can decide on a centralized network management platform, they must know what they want to oversee, such as wired and wireless voice, video and data networks.
2. Focus on standards-based, heterogeneous solutions.  Most higher education networks are built from an assortment of various vendors’ gear. Therefore, a centralized network management platform should be able to interoperate with the academic institution’s architecture of voice, video, wired and wireless solutions.
3. Plot out the project.  With limited staffing and budget, higher education IT has little to no room for error regarding deployments so they must plan their centralized network management project carefully.
4. Baseline the environment. Once the centralized network management platform is in place, it’s critical to mark a baseline in terms of configuration and infrastructure performance.
5. Look for a single pane of glass. Human resources are a shrinking asset in most higher education IT shops. Therefore, they need a centralized network management platform that offers a consolidated and proactive view of the enterprise.
6. Revisit and optimize.  Centralized network management is an ongoing strategy, not a one-and-done proposition.

Many institutions already have a robust learning on demand infrastructure and are prepared for the increase in remote learners. How does your institution rate? Is H1N1 a cause for panic or a call to action and the impetus for delivering anytime, anywhere access? We want to hear from you.