President's Report Masthead
March 31, 2014

Expanded relationship opens IT research to entire campus

With IT operations providing support to virtually everyone on campus, a recent upgrade to Binghamton University’s contract with IT research firm Gartner now allows access to information technology research to every student, faculty member and staff member on campus.

The opportunities now open to learn about best practices and what is happening in the IT industry can benefit everyone, said Gartner’s Andrea Adair. “I’m a client manager and my sole responsibility is to ensure Binghamton University is getting value from its investment.”

Gartner, a worldwide company and the oldest to focus on the IT industry, provides fact-based research and consulting services to help their clients use and manage IT for optimum performance. Only institutions of higher education can gain the kind of access to Gartner research that Binghamton now has.

The Information Technology Services Task Force took advantage of Gartner services last fall when gathering background to make its recommendations for the future of ITS operations on campus. Vice President for Research Bahgat Sammakia chaired the task force. “We turned to Gartner Consulting to help us determine best practices,” Sammakia said. “The resources and research they provided us on trends in the IT industry, particularly as it relates to higher education, helped us refine our recommendations in a way that would have been difficult otherwise.”

Gartner’s understanding of the higher education market is definitely a plus for the campus, said Adair. “For example, IT staff can use it to gain information about vendors in making an important purchasing decision. Gartner is vendor neutral because Gartner is a research company and has a strict research and criteria methodology. That’s an attractive quality,” she said. “In addition, academia is interested in research in general so in terms of faculty, we have some that use Gartner research to assist them in developing curriculum for not just computer science but for management programs for example. We’re also a resource to direct their students to.
                     
Read more