If you haven’t been into a college library recently, you may still have an image in your mind that isn’t quite correct anymore—strict rules on food and drink, massive shelves of books, and the sounds of scribbling pens and turning pages echoing throughout the library. While there are still plenty of books and areas for quiet contemplation, today’s college library is undergoing a transformation that leaves those old images firmly in the past.
What’s happened is that we’ve crossed from information scarcity—with libraries as gatekeepers to vast stores of knowledge—to an age of information overload. But the vast amount of digital information isn’t making libraries and librarians obsolete, it’s simply changing the roles they play on the college campus.
Walk into most college libraries today, and you’ll find well-lit, wide open areas dotted with computers, tables, and energetic students. The floor plans have changed, especially on the first floors. Explore a little further and you’ll find additions of cafes, collaborative spaces, and quiet study rooms equipped with the latest tech.
What you may not see are the hallowed stacks, rising up on every floor. Libraries have begun to adapt not just to the digital age, but to changing study habits and preferences for experimentation and collaboration. What we’ve seen is that libraries on campuses across the nation are doing their best to remain a hub of student activity and creation—even as physical books become less important to students.
And that has inevitably created some tension. This is a massive shift from the way it was done for hundreds of years to a new system that has very nearly turned things on their head. In some instances this push has been descried by librarians as coming too quickly, and with what they see as too great a price when it comes to the library’s role on campus.
But when administrators work with librarians, students, faculty, and IT, the fruits of those collaborations can be quite astonishing.
For instance, Ringling College of Art and Design recently opened their brand new, $18 million Alfred R. Goldstein Library—a library built with technology at the center of its mission, and packed full of collaborative and experiential opportunities for students. That includes a 24-hour computer lab, a digital presentation system, and a state-of-the-art wireless network to fully support all of the tools and tech being used on a daily basis.
And that’s really what the revolution in college libraries is all about—adapting to the changing needs and perceptions of students. As hard as it may be to draw our focus away from traditional library structures, there is a way forward that uses the best of our new technology, without losing the emphasis on learning and personal growth.
The library isn’t the only part of the college campus that’s changing these days, but it certainly is drawing a lot of attention. Different aspects of campus life are adapting to a digital world, and higher ed institutions are now recognizing the need for seamless, secure integration of the many different apps and systems that are currently running on campus, or soon will be. If your school could use a powerful integration platform on campus, then give N2N Services a call today.
Hybrid Integration Platforms, or HIPs, allow citizen integrators to calibrate and manage APIs, set security layers and cross walk variables without coding or help from IT. What this means in plain language is that an HIP can help solve integration problems by allowing users to establish data flows between SaaS, PaaS and on-premises applications and data systems at their discretion.
For colleges and universities, the need for HIPs coincides with the change from legacy ERP systems to hybrid, cloud-based ERP. These cloud-based apps are being added as needed, rather than the traditional heavy customization of monolithic, on-premise ERP solutions. Basically, that means that all of these disparate apps need to be able to communicate with each other effectively, and this isn’t always the case. That’s where HIPs come into play.
At N2N, we’ve designed our Illuminate platform to be the first commercially available HIP for the higher education market. Illuminate acts as translator, enabling different cloud-based apps to seamlessly and securely communicate with each other. So when students use a mobile device to check grades, schedule classes, or look at financial aid, they are able to do so safe in the knowledge that their information is being kept private, and only being used by apps that need their data.
This is important for colleges and universities around the country because in coming years, more and more of their ERP solutions are going to be cloud-based. Adding apps every year doesn’t seem like a good solution unless you can find a cost-effective way to integrate them together.
And that’s exactly what Illuminate provides. App developers work with us because they know they can market their product as flexible and secure, and colleges love us because we help them realize the dream of a fully integrated campus. Students may not know what goes on in the background when they open their mobile apps, but they still reap the benefits of HIPs like Illuminate. Students expect to find cutting edge technology on campus when they get to college, and falling behind can cost a school in enrollment and the quality of the students they attract.
And because Illuminate was built with the security of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), you can rest easy knowing that apps are using the highest levels of cloud-security available. We know you need integration, but we also know that it’s useless if it isn’t secure. Using OCI means Illuminate is the safest HIP on the market today.
At N2N, we understand the trends developing in ERP implementation, and that’s why we built Illuminate, to help educational institutions solve their integration problems. When students have access to fast and secure mobile apps, it enhances their education and everyone wins. Adding the newest apps on campus can be difficult for colleges, but with Illuminate, it doesn’t have to be.
So contact N2N Services today if you’d like to hear more about Illuminate and how our experts can help you with all of your integration needs.
Increasingly, educational institutions are moving away from their highly customized ERP solutions, and towards more flexible, cloud-based solutions. In fact, according to Gartner, by 2018, at least 30 percent of service-centric companies will move the majority of their ERP applications to the cloud. That’s because the cloud offers greater flexibility that monolithic, postmodern ERP simply doesn’t provide.
The needs of educational institutions are constantly changing as technology marches forward because colleges and universities are expected to be on the forefront of any new technology. Students come to college expecting the latest tech and apps to supplement their education, and this can be difficult to accomplish with a legacy ERP system that isn’t flexible enough to meet changing educational and business needs.
So the solution seems to be moving ERP applications to the cloud, and embracing a hybrid approach that keeps a small core of on-premise ERP functions, combined with cloud point solutions. These loosely coupled suites of cloud functionality will bring with them integration challenges for the institutions that adopt them.
That’s where N2N and our Illuminate platform step in. Illuminate acts as the plumbing between an educational institution’s cloud-based apps and their legacy ERP systems, providing seamless and secure data transfer from each system. Illuminate takes each department’s existing, disparate systems and acts as a translator, allowing them to communicate with each other.
Illuminate allows users to calibrate and manage APIs, set security layers and cross walk variables without coding or help from IT. This is known as a Hybrid Integration Platform. Illuminate is special because it’s the first commercially available HIP in the higher education market. With Illuminate, colleges and universities have a simple, low-cost solution to for all their integration needs, and they can rest easy knowing that they can add any cloud-based application as needed. So when the next great mobile app comes calling, colleges will be able to easily integrate and implement the app on campus.
At N2N, our goal has always been solving the integration problems of institutions, no matter what market they are in. It won’t be long before more institutions make the switch to the cloud to solve their ERP problems, and when they do, they’re going to need a smart, inexpensive integration solution.
Contact us today if you’d like to learn more about Illuminate and to set up a demonstration for you and your team.
At N2N, our goal is to solve the systems integration challenges of educational institutions and support an integrated digital campus. We achieve this by helping our partners and their clients with all of their integration needs, using our state-of-the-art Integration Platform as a Service. Now, colleges and universities are able to easily integrate new, cloud-based apps with their existing IT apps and systems in a cost-effective manner. Illuminate acts a translator for these disparate apps and systems, allowing them to integrate seamlessly with each other.
Students and faculty may not know it, but when they use their mobile apps, they’re accessing information from several different departments, and this information has to get to them quickly and securely. At N2N, we want those apps to be as safe and effective as possible, and that’s why we’ve teamed up with Modo Labs to combine our services and make it easier than ever for colleges and universities to develop and implement their own mobile apps.
Using their Kurogo Platform, Modo Labs is putting powerful mobile implementation and development capabilities directly into the hands of non-developers. So instead of hiring costly app developers or expensive consultants, higher education institutions can develop mobile apps that are ideal for their campus’without the traditional costs. Kurogo’s unique combination of data access, powerful pre-built functionality, and ease-of-use dramatically reduces mobile development time and costs.
The combination of Kurogo and Illuminate provides colleges and universities with the ability to design mobile apps that fit their needs, and to make sure that those apps will be effectively integrated with their present systems. The broad range of disparate data sources faced by most universities can be easily integrated and accessed through N2N’s powerful Illuminate data engine, and in turn, quickly mobilized into a rich mobile experience through the Kurogo mobile app assembly platform.
Kiran Kodithala, President and CEO of N2N Services, puts it like this. “Students, Administrators and Faculty at campuses have been looking for a comprehensive mobile app that they can use for student engagement and student success. This partnership gives institutions of higher education the best of all worlds. While N2N provides secure enterprise data access, Modo Labs offers the best-of-breed front-end mobile experience that makes it possible to quickly leverage that data on any device.”
The partnership between N2N and Modo Labs is a dramatic step towards our goal of a fully integrated campus, where students can access their information at any time, and be sure that their personal data is safe and secure on the app they are using. Kurogo and Illuminate are two powerful platforms that together are changing the way colleges and universities think about their options for mobile applications.
At N2N, we pride ourselves on our partnerships with some of the most innovative companies in higher education, and we’re not done yet. If you’d like to hear more about how partnering with N2N Services can help your business, then contact us today.
At N2N, we’re proud of our background in higher education and the service we provide to colleges and universities around the country. Illuminate is an invaluable asset to colleges that are running more and more apps and systems each year, and looking for a way to securely integrate them all. We know Illuminate is a boon for higher education institutions, but that’s not the only place it can work. Yes, we pride ourselves on helping colleges, but we also pride ourselves on our ability to make our services work for a diverse group of businesses and institutions.
Now that businesses are using the cloud without the reservations that they once had when it first came onto the scene, there are certain issues that almost all businesses face ones that aren’t limited to colleges. The cloud allows businesses to easily store and access data and applications using any device, without having to deal with expensive hardware purchases. This boosts productivity and efficiency, while driving down costs. With the growth of cloud-based applications, companies ended up using these apps along with older on-premise legacy applications. The trick is getting all of these to work together, whether they’re cloud-based or on-premise.
And that?s exactly what Illuminate does. Illuminate is what’s called an iPaaS, or Integrated Platform as a Service. It acts as a central hub to integrate all of the applications a business uses, whether cloud-based or on-premise. So there usually isn’t any hardware to install, and our “concierge approach” means that we provide integration as a service, with no lengthy training required for implementation. No matter what combination of legacy, on-premises systems and cutting-edge SaaS applications your business uses, Illuminate acts as a central hub to integrate them all. It allows each program to communicate with every other program seamlessly and securely, and makes it easy to accommodate the addition of as many new applications as may be necessary in the future.
One dashboard within Illuminate allows administrators to view and monitor transactions that pass through the system, to ensure that information input into any one application will instantly be shared with all other participating applications as well, so that all systems are always up-to-date and coordinated.
Don?t think that all these transactions lead to less security, though. Illuminate allows for central management and monitoring of data transfers, helping to ensure compliance with all regulations.
At N2N, we know a college can,t be run just like a business, but we also know that businesses today face many of the same challenges as higher education institutions as they look to the cloud to handle their applications. With Illuminate, no longer will employees need to update several different systems with new data, or search through several different applications to find information. Illuminate automates those tedious tasks, freeing up resources for other projects.
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