Technology plays a critical role in education. From engagement through to inclusion it has a profound impact on teaching and learning.
The problem has been that most advanced enterprise technology is simply out of reach for a lot of organisations. This is due to the costs, complexity and commitment of delivering something new on site. When organisations have made a big investment they tend to find that with the pace of change of technology, they soon have increasingly outdated software and systems that are slowly stagnating on-site with no money or resource left available to update or upgrade them.
Enter the cloud – the game changer.
The emergence of the cloud has given education organisations of all shapes and sizes access to a huge range of the latest and greatest technology on tap for a fraction of the overall cost, infrastructure complexity and on-site commitment. Problem solved then…or is it?
The downside to having so much choice and availability is everyone wants something different and they want it as fast as you can click the ‘sign up’ button, and most of the time they just expect it to work like magic.
That bit of magic is a piece of technology that allows your IT team to effectively manage the space between your organisation and cloud applications. It’s the missing link and is called identity and access management (IAM). It acts as an enablement technology for cloud services. If you get identity and access management right, then your technological capabilities increase exponentially.
Understanding the power of IAM is a complex undertaking, especially if you’re new to the subject. An identity and access management system is a large automated machine that sits in-between your users and all of your applications, and intelligently controls all of the processes required to give people seamless, secure access to all of the resources they need, when they need it, where they need it, and on whatever device is most appropriate – that’s the simple explanation.
To help you understand the full complexity, and how to implement it in your organisation I have put together this detailed guide. The guide has been developed specifically for the education sector which arguably has the most complex identity requirements of all. It details:
- Cloud compatibility
- Application deployment and provisioning
- Single sign on and access control
- Managing student lifecycles
- Services for Alumni
- Password management
- User engagement
- Migrations
- Cloud file storage
We would love to hear your thoughts and how useful you found this guide so please leave your comments below.