Even for large corporations, cloud migration is not always a simple task. For information technology organizations at institutions of higher learning, there are plenty of barriers in a move to the cloud, with legacy systems being right near the top of the list.

“If there’s one thing in my time in higher education that I saw time and time again, it’s the instant legacy problem,” said Richard Palmer (pictured), analyst and practice leader for public sector at research and consulting firm Ovum Pty. Ltd. “They create an orphan that is neither manageable by the vendor or the organization. The danger point is in moving to infrastructure as a service or platform as a service, you carry over that customization thinking, which creates instant legacy.”

Palmer spoke with Jeff Frick, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Imagine event this week in Seattle. They discussed solutions to legacy issues and key innovation drivers for higher education (see the full interview with transcript here).

Turning to SaaS

To avoid the kinds of issues that hamstring an IT organization grappling with the problem of “instant legacy,” higher education is turning to software as a service in much the way that the private sector has found relief in the same space.

“Purchasing SaaS is an obvious ploy; it gets you right out of all of the problems that you had before,” Palmer explained. “You can buy new SaaS that gives you really good analytics and a new communications and collaboration engagement layer. That’s really transformative.”

What are some of the key innovation drivers in higher education today? Student success and retention are the most common, according to Palmer, and this has become a core business for many schools.

“That is ubiquitous in higher education, to bring the cost down and to make sure every intervention the school does is meaningful and produces a positive outcome,” Palmer explained. “Things like analytics play into that and machine learning more and more.”

Here’s the complete video interview part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS Imagine:

Photo: SiliconANGLE