Donuts or Stars: Centralization v. Decentralization in IT Management

Audience: All
Technical Level: Low

This session explores the issue of centralization (a.k.a. outsourcing) v. decentralization of IT and provides real life examples of what works and more importantly, when to proceed with caution. Are most IT services now a commodity that can be centralized with little impact to service levels or does in-house decentralized hardware, software, and people make for a unique synergy that simply works better every time. You don�t want to reinvent the wheel for services like email, file storage, network printing, web hosting, admin system, help desk, active directory, etc., if you can find lower cost, higher quality alternatives that work in a law school environment. Do not be caught off guard, join the discussion on this culturally unique decision that explores the advantages and disadvantages of several centralized options that you may soon be facing at your law school.

MP3: DurbinLR5Fr100.mp3

Play It Now!

Michael P Durbin
Director Information Technology
St. Louis University School of Law

Deb Ranard
Director, IT
Capital University School of Law

About Elmer Masters

Elmer R. Masters is the Director of Technology at the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (www.cali.org) where he works on interesting projects involving technology and legal education like eLangdell, Classcaster, Lawbooks, QuizWright, and the CALI website. He has over 30 years of experience building tech tools for legal education and systems for accessing law and legal materials on the Internet. He is the admin of the Teknoids mailing list (www.teknoids.net) and has been blogging about legal education, law, and technology for over 20 years (www.symphora.com). He has a JD from Syracuse University College of Law and was employed by Syracuse, Cornell Law School, and Emory University School of Law before joining CALI in 2003. Elmer has presented at the CALI Conference for Law School Computing (where he organizes the program), the AALL and AALS Annual Meetings, Law Via The Internet, and other conferences, symposia, and workshops on topics ranging from IT management in law schools to building open access court reporting systems to information architecture design and implementation in law.
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