Page 13 - Campus Technology, August/September 2017

CLOUD COMPUTING
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future requirements might be,” he said. “That is a big chunk of change.”
Britton said he believes the partnership with AWS will allow Cal Poly to future-proof its approach and have a better chance of staying out in front of the pace of technological change. As an example of the agility the move will bring, he said researchers at Cal Poly would have access to secure high-performance computing and storage on an as-needed basis. “Before, the time to set that up with us in our physical infrastructure was months,” he said. “That is now down to minutes.”
Britton also sees the shift as a win for Cal Poly’s IT team, which can work with a more modern technology stack. “No matter how we do this, we still need people to work with our customers. We have people who have been working in the data center and have a lot of knowledge about how the university does business,” he said. “We don’t want to lose them. We want to transition them to helping customers ramp up AWS capabilities and accelerate a success formula for students and faculty. Staff members who had been working in what we can now call ‘ancient technology’ are becoming state-of-the- art technologists in how to use the cloud platform. Those skill sets are intriguing to our employees.”
David Raths is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | August/September 2017
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