Collaborating for Success
IU promotes a culture of excellence that also values honesty , integrity , and mutual respect
Duane Schau , Sarah Engel , & Cathy O ’ Bryan
As we face change on campuses of all sizes , sometimes we think we are on opposing sides — only to find that we just have different perspectives on the same issue . It takes passion , commitment , and showmanship to wake up a staid organization to disruptive change , and honesty , determination , and foresight to work together toward common goals .
By way of illustration , when tablets and virtualization emerged on the scene a few years ago , some IT professionals saw them as the way of the future , while others saw them as another fad . The reality was somewhere in between , as Indiana University ’ s Duane Schau , Client Services , and Cathy O ’ Bryan , Client Support , illustrate here . Over time , both have come to see things more clearly — with the benefit of hindsight , of course , but also with an ongoing commitment to open exchange based on mutual respect .
The Great Tablet Debate A little background first . IUanyWare is an enterprise cloud-based service that provides Indiana University ’ s students , faculty , and staff with on-demand access to hundreds of software applications . IU began developing IUanyWare in March 2010 , and moved the service into production in the fall of 2012 . With IUanyWare , IU enables its 110,000 + students plus all faculty and staff to access critical software , cloud storage ( 50 Gb on Box at IU ), and printing tools on any personal device ( including PCs , Macs , tablets , and smartphones ).
IUanyWare runs on virtual technology from IU ’ s primary Data Center in
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Bloomington , using Indiana ’ s I-Light network to reach all eight campuses across the state . This means the IU community has on-demand access to more than 200 applications , including Adobe Creative Suite , Microsoft Office , various stat / math packages like SPSS , and specialized departmental apps , through the IUanyWare portal ( iuanyware . iu . edu ).
When IU introduced IUanyWare in 2012 , says Duane Schau of Client Services , “ I predicted that within the next three years all students would be carrying tablets — and laptops would be a technology of the past . While I didn ’ t claim to be a futurist , I saw our students learning across a diverse set of tools of engagement . They were framing innovation inside a larger social fabric that informed us of their wants and needs . Tablets align content and device to meet their consumer-based orientation . I said we should make every effort to meet those expectations , moving content creation from big-box stationary devices to highly personal computing devices incorporating small-screen formats .
At the same time , Cathy O ’ Bryan of Client Support saw tablets as the hot , mobile technology in 2012 . “ However ,” she said , “ having seen the rise and fall of video discs and opaque projectors — not to mention Apple ’ s Newton — let ’ s just say that I ’ d become a bit jaded .
“ As a long-time specialist in instructional technology and support , I ’ ve had to make sense of a lot of hype . There has not been a time in my experience of technical transition ( since 1981 ) where “ all ” of anything applied to a population of 150,000 faculty , staff , and students . More than likely , the latest and greatest just leads to increasing diversification of BYOE ( Bring Your Own Everything ).”
Cathy suggested that there wasn ’ t a single device that would rule the technical endpoint world ; rather , they would collectively add to its options . “ As a touch typist who depends on a real keyboard , an instructional technologist of 30 + years , and a true believer that human habits are much harder to change than most anticipate , I was willing to bet that not all would go to tablets at IU . Indeed , I thought the tablet rage will fade in a few years . Call me jaded or call me wise .”
In reality , the post-PC future is not a tablet or a smartphone , but a contextaware , user-centric environment . Devices and applications interact with data in ways that are consistent with both the users ’ needs and device capabilities with the minimum of interference . That means an app-centric , touch-enabled , locationaware experience on a PC , tablet , or phone , and a mouse-driven windowing ( small “ w ”, but in all likelihood Microsoft Windows ) environment on the desktop — all delivered through a common portal that understands context and delivers actionable content . subhead ??
If there were ever a good time for desktop virtualization , today is it . Conventional desktop management deployment implementations break down , and increasingly , the amount of manual intervention needed to keep these systems working requires one or more localized
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