Three years ago, Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., had 15% of its IT infrastructure and applications in the cloud. Today, that number has climbed to 55%. Michael Mathews, CIO and associate vice president of innovation, said the university, which has 5,000 students and 700 faculty members, aims to be at 100% in just a few years.
Driving this transformation, in part, is the pressing need for cloud-based unified communications (UC). Where unified communications once comprised a simple combination of voice, video and email, it now is a sophisticated blend of chat, instant messaging, video and voice conferencing and SMS all tied into major business systems like customer relationship management and the school’s learning management application.