Information Technology in Higher Education

Steve Hsu, VPRGS (CEO and Founder, SafeWeb, Inc. -- first SSL VPN appliances)

The Enterprise Software business

Huge margins, Big contracts.

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Customer lock in.

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Gee Whiz sales process: big orgs have random chunks of IT budget lying around. “Gee whiz, sounds really cool!”

Elusive ROI

Very hard to measure.

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Institutional memory is limited.

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Payoffs often require training, process reengineering.

My suggestions

1. Don’t be fooled by gee whiz -- understand tangible benefits: estimate potential value (actual use cases) at the beginning.

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2. It’s OK to be a late adopter -- most IT projects do not achieve positive ROI. First adopters are beta testers.

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3. Carefully watch peer universities and rigorously evaluate outcomes. (What did they pay? Is it useful?)

My suggestions

Most importantly: assign costs to part of organization that advocates for project. They must have skin in the game:

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NO FREE GEE WHIZ STUFF