In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, Joe Peppard argues that executives get the IT they deserve. Peppard compares the relative ease and simplicity of digital services in these executives personal lives to the complicated nature of digital services in the corporate world.
This is because in the corporate world, there is a good chance that every software application is going to have to work in sync with several others. Information has to be shared across platforms and systems if there you are going to have a successful IT department. Peppard uses the analogy of traveling to a different city to see a band. For each portion of your trip, flight, hotel, and concert ticket, you would have to enter your personal information and credit card information separately. The systems don’t share your information, and so you’re forced to complete the same forms multiple times.
“Operating this way today is a big no-no in the corporate world. Imagine if your company?s internal applications couldn’t share data and processes carrying out similar functions or tasks, had different interfaces and screen layouts, and required different passwords. Just think of the inefficiencies and opportunities for errors,” Peppard writes.
It’s true. If you can’t share information securely, you’re going to have an incredibly frustrating and inefficient system that limits what you and your users can accomplish. In an environment with many different systems processing sensitive data, such as a college, it’s imperative that that data is shared in a simple and secure manner.
At N2N, we understand the need for safe and seamless data transfers between software applications and systems. That’s why we’ve created an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) software suite, the Illuminate platform, which is designed specifically for the world of higher education. A college or university has a myriad of applications and systems that students and faculty access every day. Keeping all of these applications working together and sharing data flawlessly is a huge task, but one made easy with Illuminate.
The designers of the Illuminate platform understand that there is no one-size-fits-all fix for integrating the diverse set of applications that exist on every college campus today. Illuminate takes the applications and systems that fit a college’s specific needs and integrates them via on central hub: the Enterprise Service Bus.
The Enterprise Service Bus is an architecture that allows many different applications to run together as part of one infrastructure. It integrates these applications, manages access to them, and presents them in one interface. With Illuminate, students can check grades, view financial aid status, and perform other previously time-consuming tasks right from their mobile device. On your end, Illuminate’s cloud-based format helps keep costs low and provides you with the ability to analyze data more efficiently, leaving you with the resources you need to make good decisions about business and your students’ educations.
If you think your college could benefit from the Illuminate platform and our team of dedicated professionals, contact N2N Integration today.
Educause recently published their Research Snapshot, Top 10 IT Issues 2016. We?d like to give you N2N?s perspective on some of these important issues, and our thoughts on how our Illuminate platform can help institutions address these areas.
First on the list is Information Security. This is a perennial concern, and is an area that has consistently, and justifiably, been a top issue for IT leaders. Concern is needed, as our interconnected world opens many avenues for malfeasance. N2N?s Illuminate platform can be an asset here, as one of its core value propositions is to make it easier for users to manage data interconnections between applications. Having a central platform with controls for data exchange and logging of transactions helps users understand where and to whom data is moving.
Educause states that technology leaders must work with academic leadership and faculty to Optimize Educational Technology. That is certainly true, and especially so in today?s fast-moving world where an institution?s perceived competitiveness can be tied to its ability to seamlessly integrate its administrative and academic technologies. N2N?s Illuminate platform has out-of-the-box adapters for many popular ed-tech (educational technology) applications, and also creates application programming interfaces to institutional data that can be leveraged by in-house developers.
Student Success Technologies are critical to improve educational outcomes. Leveraging technology means sharing data, and unfortunately, much institutional data is stuck in its own silo, and each time it needs to be provided to a new, innovative application, a customized interface must be written and maintained. N2N?s Illuminate addresses this by leveraging its core Enterprise Service Bus technology to convert a complex web of interconnections and a ?one-to-one? integration philosophy to a ?one-to-many? paradigm, helping an institution to be nimble in its use of changing tools.
Enterprise Application Integrations (#8)?are a key to efficient and effective institutional operations, and are the core value proposition of the N2N Illuminate platform. The Illuminate platform?s ready-to-use adapters for common educational enterprise applications makes it easy to connect legacy systems to its Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). This ?one-to-many? connectivity model allows technical staff to focus on areas where they add unique value to their organization rather than continually building and maintaining a mesh of ?one-off? connections.
It’s been a long time since we relied solely on phone calls and voicemail for communication. We’ve since grown into email, instant messages, conferencing, and video calls. Now there are more ways to get ahold of each other than there ever have been, and it takes certain technological know-how for an employee to juggle all these communications and respond appropriately. And if it’s a hassle for an end user to manage all their communications, then you can bet it isn’t easy for an IT department to deal with these systems in an simple and secure manner.
It may seem like a tough call to make, but unified communications are becoming a necessity for higher education institutions that want to encourage a culture of collaboration and innovation. Video conferencing is increasingly becoming a popular option, especially for schools with satellite campuses that are located miles away.
Imagine a situation when a voice call couldn’t quite communicate the concept at hand. Now imagine an easy solution, as the call switches to video and a visual demonstration allows the person on the other end to fully grasp the concept being presented. This really isn’t a radical idea, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that unified communications are improving collaboration and decision-making at campuses across the country. Voicemails can be accessed from email, documents can be shared remotely, and students can watch a lecture from a campus in another state.
This all sounds fantastic, but how do you integrate a diverse set of applications and systems, and truly unify your communications? At N2N, we’ve created the Illuminate Platform, a strategic and adaptable combination of technologies, starting with a flexible, reliable and secure cloud infrastructure platform. Rather than trying to find that one solution that does everything, the Illuminate platform was designed with the understanding that there is no one system that will address all institutional needs.
Illuminate gives you seamless and secure data transfer across all systems, even legacy and strategic programs that still run locally. It works as a central hub, linking everything together and taking data and transforming it into the format that another application needs. Illuminate is like a highway leading between several cities, bypassing the system of existing roads, ensuring smooth data transactions across applications.
At N2N, we pride ourselves on our educational background and expertise. Higher education institutions are not businesses that can be run like any other corporation. Of course, there are business elements to running a college or university, but at N2N we understand that higher education is about more than business, and we pride ourselves on being able to find solutions that integrate both business and academic applications. That way you can focus on providing your students with the best education possible, instead of your IT structure.
If you would like to know more about how our team and the N2N Illuminate platform can help your college or university, contact N2N Services today.
At N2N, our motto is “connect anything to anything,” and we are constantly leading the pack when it comes to higher education systems integration. Providing colleges and universities with a solution that interconnects their disparate data systems has always been our goal, and we’ve developed our Integration Cloud platform, called Illuminate, to do just that. Illuminate takes each data source and integrates them securely and affordably. But we want to keep pushing the boundaries of what our technology can do for higher education. We want to extend this data connectivity with a rich, in-depth, and interactive mobile application.
That’s why we’ve teamed up with Modo Labs. Together, we intend to provide a truly stunning mobile solution that allows students to connect to their financial data, course work, grades, and other information, while at the same time empowering them to interact with their teachers, advisors, tutors, and other campus activities. This innovative new platform is the product of collaboration between our Illuminate date engine and Modo Lab’s Kurogo, a mobile app assembly platform.
So who are Modo Labs, and why is this partnership so transformative for higher
education? Based out of Cambridge, MA, Modo Labs provides a complete mobile solution that empowers ordinary people to create their own applications. These types of mobile capabilities used to only be the domain of mobile developers and expensive consultants. Now, Modo Labs Kurogo Platform gives non-developers an outstanding app assembly system with powerful mobile implementation and development capabilities. The secret is in Kurogo’s combination of data access, pre-built functionality, and ease of use. Today, creating mobile apps for campus is no longer out of reach for non-technical staff or business owners.
And how does this platform fit in with N2N’s Illuminate data engine? Well, the combination of the two allows a massive simplification in the mobile app building process. Illuminate integrates and allows access to the multitude of different data sources in a university system, while Kurogo quickly and easily mobilizes them into a well-developed mobile experience.
Stewart Elliot, Modo Labs CEO said, “We are excited to partner with N2N Services. The combination of the two platforms makes it easier than ever for Universities to provide the comprehensive mobile experience that students expect. Students will be able to easily accomplish even more important tasks on their mobile phones, including the ability to perform direct transactions in virtually any student information system, such as class registration, yet do so as part of an advanced, interactive and rich mobile experience.”
This combination of higher education technology is a major development for colleges and universities around the country. At N2N, we understand the importance of easy-to-use technology in campus life. Today’s students are used to instant access and in-depth mobile apps. Our partnership with Modo Labs provides these institutions with the best of both worlds: secure enterprise data access, and an unsurpassed front-end mobile experience.
If you would like to hear more about our partnership with Modo Labs, and how your college can benefit, contact N2N Services today.
If you?ve been looking for all-in-one software solutions to streamline operations at your school, you might have encountered the term ?Enterprise Service Bus? (or ?ESB?).
We know that there are a lot of acronyms and potentially confusing terms out there when it comes to technology, and ESB is one of them. So, we thought we?d walk you through what exactly an Enterprise Service Bus is, what purpose it serves, and how it can make a huge difference for your college or university.
The definition of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
In the simplest terms, an Enterprise Service Bus is an architecture that allows many different applications to run together as a part of one infrastructure. It integrates these different applications, manages the access to them, and presents them to the user in a single interface. An ESB is typically part of an integration suite and can offer many valuable tools that other frameworks do not.
To make this abstract concept a bit easier to understand, think about the word ?bus? for a second. In the tech world, it refers to a transmission path where signals are dropped off and picked up ? kind of like an actual bus! So, you can think of the Enterprise Service Bus as a ?bus? through which all of your institution’s information passes.
The ESB?s Purpose in the N2N Integration Cloud (NIC)
An ESB is a core component of the N2N Integration Cloud (NIC) because it serves as the architecture that allows the NIC to integrate all of a school?s applications in one central hub. It actually provides the interface that allows you to connect your institution’s applications together ? parametrizable with no coding by you required!
Why This Matters For Your College or University
While you can probably immediately think of some benefits of the application integration offered by the NIC, there are a few that might not be so obvious. Here are some ways the NIC can help your college:
It allows your students to use their mobile phones to check grades, view financial aid status, and more (NIC for Mobile).
It cuts down on manual labor needs by eliminating tedious data entry tasks.
It helps keep costs low (the NIC is cloud-based and does not require you to purchase extra hardware).
It provides you with the ability to analyze data more effectively (melding data from multiple applications). That way, you have the resources you need to make good business decisions and give each student a personalized educational experience.
The NIC was specifically designed with higher education in mind, so you can feel confident knowing that it can help you achieve your goals. It?s also quick to deploy, so you can start benefitting from its functionality right away.
So, there you have it ? an explanation of what an Enterprise Service Bus is and why it is an important part of the NIC. If you have questions or are interested in learning more about how the NIC can help your college or university, we?d love to chat ? contact us today!
If you?ve worked in IT for any length of time, especially in the field of higher education, then you know that it wasn?t too long ago that CIOs had a very different job.
There was no cloud. There was no SaaS. There were no smartphones and tablets, and no wifi.
There were on-campus email servers to worry about. There was software to install, and hardware to purchase. There were updates to perform manually, and emergency maintenance to be done when something went wrong.
But as technology has evolved, so has the role of the CIO. No longer saddled with maintaining a massive on-campus computing infrastructure, CIOs in higher ed today have more time to focus on innovation, vision, and strategy in their schools? use of technology. More time to work out how best to utilize tech to support the mission of their institutions ? namely, the success of their students. And more time to think about and prepare their schools for whatever disruptive new developments may emerge in the future.
But planning for the future is no mean feat, considering the tendency of new technology to take a completely different direction from the one predicted. After all, while the experts were all promising us flying cars (I used to watch The Jetsons and think I’d never drive a car with wheels!) and hoverboards, the internet was quietly being developed.
So what?s a CIO to do? The way we see it, there are three parts to a prudent, forward-looking IT plan.
1. Get your priorities straight.
New technology is exciting, and taking advantage of that excitement and buzz can seem like a clever way to attract students and project a modern sensibility. But as any educator will tell you, some tech simply isn?t useful in the classroom, and some causes more hassles than it removes. That?s why it?s vital to set out your department?s priorities and align them with those of your school. That way, any new technological developments can be considered in light of what?s truly important to faculty and administration alike, whether they?re new apps or hoverboards or something in between.
2. Stay agile.
Sooner or later, there will be another innovation just as world-changing as the internet. Should you wait to see whether it catches on before jumping on board? Of course. Should you wait so long that it?s old news? Definitely not. Create a department – and a school – agile enough to take advantage of every new opportunity when the time is right. It?s as much about mindset as it is about infrastructure.
3. Plan for the expected.
In the meantime, it?s prudent to expect more new and improved versions of the same tech we have today. And since those are the innovations we?ll be dealing with most in the foreseeable future, it just makes sense to arrange your school?s technology set-up in a way that will most easily accommodate new additions over the years.
This is where the N2N Integration Cloud comes into play. Most educational institutions link their various apps, programs, and platforms together via a complex web of individual connections, linking each one to every other one.
The NIC unravels that tangled web and allows schools to integrate any and all systems and applications they use, whether legacy on-premises programs or brand new SaaS apps, through one central hub. Each program has only one connection to deal with ? its connection to that hub. Within the hub, data is instantly translated and transmitted to all other programs for seamless integration. And any time a new app or program needs to be added, it?s as simple as linking it up to that same hub – no more complex additions to the web.
Today?s smart CIO expects the unexpected ? but prepares for the expected, as well. Contact N2N Services today for more information about how we can help you get ready for the future.
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