ENGINEERING

Higher Education Seeks Tech Partners To Advance Research & Education 

 

According to the National Venture Capital Association, investors poured $400 million last year into education-technology companies. Bay Area and West Coast leading technology firms, including Adobe, Box, Brocade, Cisco, Evogh, HP, Juniper Networks, Splunk, Vidyo and VMware are actively pursuing the higher education market with new offerings and solutions tailored for the education communities. 

 

To assist industry and higher education, the nation’s major research universities, via their technology consortium, Internet2, recently opened a West Coast office in Emeryville, California. Internet2, a close partner with technology leaders and innovative networking companies, will now have an office near its West Coast members and will influence the direction technology companies take involving everything from e-textbooks to Big Data scientific research. 

 

Internet2 includes more than 220 major research universities, such as Caltech, Stanford, University of California-Berkeley, University of California-Davis, California State University-East Bay, University of Oregon, University of Utah and Washington State, and nearly 120 industry, affiliate and research and education members. Internet2’s California regional network partner, California’s Corporation for Education Network Initiatives (CENIC), will also share space with the consortium giving them a Northern California presence to complement their Southern California headquarters. 

 

Internet2 also recently hired former UC-Berkeley’s Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer Shelton Waggener. Along with Waggener, other strategic hires and resources will be based in Emeryville to serve the growing demand for Internet2’s high performance network, cloud, research support services, industry relations and other programs. Waggener leads Internet2’s implementation of emerging cloud and advanced technologies on behalf of the member campuses supporting large-scale adoption of new research and education. 

 

In 2012, Internet2 engaged 29 cloud computing companies and more than 150 of its university members to drive down the cost and complexity of adopting these emerging solutions and developing higher education specific cloud services. This represents tens of millions of dollars in value for its members. 

 

Internet2's members are able to leverage the nations fastest research and education network – Internet2’s 100G-enabled, 8.8 terabit optical network to deliver cloud services and keep pace with the exponential growth in Big Data science being driven by the nation's collaborative researchers in labs and universities. The combination of this new network and expanded education and research focused cloud services enable transformational new solutions for education delivery and provide better-yielding solutions for university business functions—helping higher education institutions remain competitive nationally and globally. 

 

“Higher education is going through massive changes. With the shift in financial models, globalization, and online educational offerings, past approaches for acquiring and using technologies are simply too slow and costly. There are too many expenses, too much overhead and too much administration,” said Shelton Waggener, senior vice president, Internet2. “The technology available to our community today gives us the opportunity to tailor cloud solutions to meet our communities specific needs while making them available to all our members simultaneously with minimal additional work per campus. Cloud technologies, like Instructure’s Canvas Learning Management Systems, Box’s collaboration platform, or Splunk’s big data tool set, are delivered through an approach enabling the next generation of research and education to occur at Internet2 speeds. The tech community is realizing big opportunities that our combined efforts bring." 

 

Box, a leading Silicon Valley cloud service provider partnered with Internet2 and member campuses including Stanford, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Notre Dame beginning the fall of 2011 to offer U.S. universities a secure and simple way to deploy Box across their entire campus communities. Box’s cloud collaboration service helps undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff access, share and manage content online and from mobile devices. 

 

“Universities are moving away from their legacy systems and instead want technology that mimics what students have become accustomed to in their personal lives,” said Whitney Bouck, general manager of enterprise at Box. “By joining forces with Internet2, higher education communities can now benefit from simple content sharing and collaboration in the cloud, making it easy for teams to work, learn and collaborate in new ways.” 

 

“More and more technology providers are discovering the value of working with our members to identify effective solutions to campus challenges and the best methods to quickly scale services that benefit teaching, learning and research,” said Internet2 CEO and President H. David Lambert. “No other national organization offers this level of collaboration between higher education and the technology industry to launch our strategic cloud and advanced networking services. Our new office allows us to be closer to our West Coast members and technology leaders, as together, we advance the research, innovation and education missions of our nation's leading universities." 

 

Internet2’s new West Coast office, which offers free video conferencing and office space to all Internet2 members and their leadership, is located at 6001 Shellmound St., Suite 850, Emeryille, CA 94608. Internet2’s other offices are located in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Washington, D.C.; and New York City.