In June I got to attend and present at the Harvard University IT Summit. The one-day summit, which brought together the IT departments from the 12 colleges that make up the University, consisted of talks, panels and breakout sessions.
The day kicked off with a keynote from Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen of The Innovator’s Dilemma and “disruptive innovation” fame. Christensen talked about disruption in business as well as disruption in Higher Ed and its threat to institutions like Harvard.
After the keynote there was a CIO panel featuring the CIOs of the various colleges where they discussed their strategic plans. When the panel ended the concurrent sessions began.
My talk (see deck above) was near the end of the day and before the final keynote. I took the attendees through the forces affecting IT in higher education and the value of a cloud brokerage model. In the last part of my presentation I went over three case studies that involved Dell and the setting up of OpenStack-based clouds in higher education.
All-in-all a great event and I hope be going back again next year.
The exhibit hall at the Harvard IT summit
Extra-credit reading
- Dell’s latest tactic centers on cloud broker service
- 2014 Harvard IT Summit: View the keynotes and presentations
- Planning for disruption — Christensen examines changes in higher ed at IT summit –Harvard Gazette
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