tal without the required commitments.
Even an executive champion is not sufficient. A facilitator must be able to build
communication channels, provide or
find expertise, help the organization
with funding, and act as handholder/
cheerleader as the organization grows
into the VCL.
One reason the facilitator is so essential is that almost invariably several
entities are involved. The VCL is not
an application whose value is best derived through its use in one or two departments. The VCL’s greatest value is
when an entire institution, across functional units and academic disciplines,
uses it to seamlessly access computing
resources.
The facilitator (like champions in
other technology projects) must present the idea to both administrators and
technical people as something desirable, as well as doable. The technology
itself is not daunting to most IT shops;
virtualization is not new. But to the staff
it could be seen as extra work. The facilitator must address this perception,
making it clear that the VCL means less
work, not more.
It’s entirely possible that convincing a university’s president, provost,
and/or CIO is not sufficient; there may
be resistance from department heads
and technical leads who see the VCL as
problematic. The facilitator can identify and help articulate the most important value-adds; one is that the VCL
flattens the hardware landscape so different labs access the same application
on the same platform, for the most part
irrespective of the configuration of the
workstation accessing the VCL.
In larger organizations, the facilitator convincing a dean to try the VCL
may indeed be able to marshal the necessary resources but must still ensure
all parties follow through; in this context the facilitator is more like a project
manager. For smaller organizations,
however, the facilitator may do everything, from moving the organization’s
mail identities into a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol structure to
finding funds to purchase software, to
creating the images to be used through
the VCL.
By fall 2009, the NCCU VCL pilot
had been in effect two full academic
years, serving several targeted areas of
the university. The heaviest users were
from the following programs: Comput-
er Information Systems (CIS), Decision
Science, Marketing, and Hospitality
and Tourism, and the School of Library
and Information Science. In addition,
special licensing was arranged for a lo-
cal high school to access an application
via NCCU’s license with the applica-
tion’s publisher.
