Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Rick Blaisdell, CTO Of ConnectEDU (Part 7)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini SM: There are several companies working in the area of skill gap analysis. Many of these solutions are starting to penetrate the education sector. But the people who are dealing with K-12 educational technology, primarily in the case of online learning management systems, are having difficulty penetrating

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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Rick Blaisdell, CTO Of ConnectEDU (Part 6)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini SM: I see. Let me switch the discussion a bit. You are deeply entrenched in the education information technology world between high schools, colleges, and the state education departments. You almost sit at the cusp of all of these educational bodies. From your vantage point, what do

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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Rick Blaisdell, CTO Of ConnectEDU (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini SM: What is the architecture of your solution in terms of dealing with these fragmented student information systems? How does that work?

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Rick Blaisdell, CTO Of ConnectEDU (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini SM: You mentioned that you chose UCS over other platforms. What were your evaluation criteria, and what did you learn about the different offerings available? Which vendors or solutions did you consider, and what did you learn about the competitors in that space? Why did you choose

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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Rick Blaisdell, CTO Of ConnectEDU (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini SM: When you say physical deployment, does that mean you had to put in a server; it is an on-premise deployment? RB: Yes. The Massachusetts state portal was actually a good case study because that was our first deployment. We architected the software using the UCS Platform,

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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Rick Blaisdell, CTO Of ConnectEDU (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini SM: What does a state portal do? RB: The state portal does basically what our national portal does, and what our product does. It offers high schools and colleges within the state a way to communicate. It also provides tools for students and parents to help students

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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Rick Blaisdell, CTO Of ConnectEDU (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini Elementary, secondary, and university education in the United States is rapidly evolving to address the needs of changing times and those of a competitive and more flat world. Until now, publishers have generally been responsible for providing learning material, a lot of which takes the form of

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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Dr. Reed Sheard, CIO Of Westmont College (Part 7)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini SM: What about higher education–specific vendors? RS: I would put Apple in there. Apple would count as an education-specific vendor. SM: How so? Do they have specific offerings for higher education? RS: Every other year, Apple organizes a conference for CIOs in higher education. They have account

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