Westmont Magazine Westmont’s IT Innovation Wins Award

The annual info world 100 awards names Westmont to prestigious
list of leaders in technology

A prestigious information technology list has recognized Westmont for its leadership in cloud-based technology. The annual InfoWorld 100 Awards chose the college as one of 100 IT organizations that have “implemented and integrated technologies in innovative ways in pursuit of concrete business goals.”

Westmont is one of seven colleges and universities in a group that includes the University of San Diego, George Washington University, Harvard Medical School, Purdue University, University of Chicago Medical Center and West Virginia University. Other businesses include the Cleveland Indians, the New York Stock Exchange, Southwest Airlines and the U.S. Army.

Reed Sheard, vice president of information technology and CIO, leads the cloud-computing initiative, which has moved specific elements of the information technology infrastructure to a cloud-centric one, migrating several systems to cloud-based services provided by Meraki, Google, Postini and Salesforce.com. “The IT department supports over 135 unique services on cam-pus,” Sheard says. “Delivering reliable, 24-7 availability of these services is a daunting task. By moving specific services such as email, spam filtering, email storage, collaboration and wireless management to the cloud, IT can work on more strategic areas.”

One of these areas is the installation of an 802.11n wireless network that creates a wireless cloud over the entire campus. Westmont was one of the first colleges in the country to move entirely to the high-speed, wireless network. This computing technology offers many benefits to faculty, staff, students and visitors, who are increasingly using laptop computers and handheld, Internet-based devices such as an iPhone or Google Android phone.

For more information, go to the site: www.infoworld.com/t/it-management/top-100-it-projects-2009-860.