Telehouse Global: The Impact of Technology on Higher Education
May 25, 2017
Building a Safer, Smarter and More Connected World, One Campus at a Time
Higher education directly affects social mobility and economic development on a global scale. For this reason, innovative technologies enabled by advanced colocation services are being developed to make higher education more attainable, affordable and effective for students from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds and geographic regions. Leveraging the power of the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data analytics, OTT streaming technologies and advanced online learning platforms, institutions are providing access to an array of new opportunities for high-quality educational experiences.
Technological innovation is fundamentally changing how universities interact with students, enabling global institutions from both the public and private education sectors to adopt various trends such as adaptive learning technologies that monitor student progress, mobile applications that enable students to remotely access course material, and next-gen learning management systems that deliver a holistic view of educational development.
Once the province of for-profit institutions, online classes are now offered at top tier universities such as Harvard, Yale and Brown, as well as mid-level and community colleges worldwide. The growing popularity of online education is due in part to the ability to provide course material in a way that is not only flexible, but immersive, utilizing mobile technology, web-based video communications, and access to a seemingly endless supply of online content and resources.
These same technologies have also granted globally dispersed universities and research organizations the ability to partner and collaborate on many influential research projects. At the University of Wisconsin, for example, agriculture students and faculty work alongside various Chinese research universities and organizations to analyze environmental factors affecting the milk yield of cows and develop solutions for the advancement of the dairy industry.
Technology is also helping universities make their communities safer, smarter and more efficient. Use of IoT devices and smart technology are pervasive throughout university campuses, ranging from automated emergency alerts and outdoor Wi-Fi access points, to smart laundry facilities and responsive HVAC systems. Data collection has also opened the door to the use of advanced analytics that help university administrators better understand and satisfy the needs of their student body with technologies such as smart map apps that help them navigate the campus, and IP-enabled cameras for enhanced security.
As universities increase their usage of technology both in and out of the classroom, many educational institutions are forced to move operations to colocation facilities to lower the cost of data storage and application management. Managing networks in-house can be a costly venture, especially when taking into account the need for infrastructure scalability to support increased technology usage in the coming years. As a result, global data centers and colocation providers have become integral to the enablement of technologically advanced higher education institutions.
Telehouse’s high-performance, carrier-neutral data centers provide universities and colleges with both dedicated and shared facilities designed to scale to any institution’s unique needs with reliable infrastructure and an unsurpassed uptime track record.
The Telehouse team will be available to discuss its role in technology enablement for higher education institutions at NANOG 70 Hackathon, taking place June 4 in Bellevue, Washington; the International Conference on Digital Government Research, taking place June 7-10 at the College of Staten Island; and NYSCIO 2017, taking place July 12-14 in Clayton, New York.
To learn more, email sales@telehouse.com to request a meeting.
