Chris's Wiki :: blog/tech/UniversityInternetWorld Commentshttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/UniversityInternetWorld?atomcommentsDWiki2009-11-16T13:36:26ZRecent comments in Chris's Wiki :: blog/tech/UniversityInternetWorld.From 128.227.205.51 on /blog/tech/UniversityInternetWorldtag:CSpace:blog/tech/UniversityInternetWorld:20c3ae67bc46aeab6e01d22df73396d6c6bff2deFrom 128.227.205.51<div class="wikitext"><p>This is a very timely and fascinating topic. In a future post can you detail out specific steps your department is taking to address the changing needs and landscape?</p>
</div>2009-11-16T13:36:26ZFrom 195.26.247.140 on /blog/tech/UniversityInternetWorldtag:CSpace:blog/tech/UniversityInternetWorld:d8da5eb135c48bafd941231ba392c9b39b8c8acdFrom 195.26.247.140<div class="wikitext"><blockquote><p>"If in practice you will be held responsible if something unforeseeable goes horribly wrong..."</p>
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<p>This is always the case with university-supplied services, whether internal or external, and I would say is the major reason for the slow pace of change for university (central) IT services.</p>
<p>When you have 20,000+ users who will all phone the helpdesk/complain about how much they're paying in fees/whatever to say that they can't get their mail if it ever happens, then you want to be sure that it works reliably... :)</p>
</div>2009-11-12T11:46:00ZFrom 195.26.247.140 on /blog/tech/UniversityInternetWorldtag:CSpace:blog/tech/UniversityInternetWorld:89313105dae6be045b271a7bb10c59a4f69c0b6bFrom 195.26.247.140<div class="wikitext"><p>I would argue that it's only become this way because the available things such as webmail and calendaring aren't much good. If there were better solutions, or the option of having in-house installs of the external apps such as Gmail, then there would be no need for the universities to change the way they work.</p>
<p>I can completely understand why they do this, as they are providing many services which they need to guarantee, and they need to be sure that users receive important emails and so on, and to be able to check that the mails arrived and were read (or not..). External services rarely give this level of flexibility (yet!).</p>
</div>2009-11-12T10:47:59ZFrom 128.210.189.101 on /blog/tech/UniversityInternetWorldtag:CSpace:blog/tech/UniversityInternetWorld:81c4007568544a6bc8f02aae67a477b9fe9c3976From 128.210.189.101<div class="wikitext"><p>This is a great point. Universities seem to be slow to adapting to the idea of doing things externally. I've been pushing the idea that if basic needs such as e-mail and calendaring are offloaded to an external provider, the university can then devote more resources to developing tools and services unique to the academic setting.</p>
</div>2009-11-11T14:31:19Z