Analyst Recap: EDUCAUSE 2011 Annual Conference

The 2011 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference was held October 17-21 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. The theme of the conference was almost exclusively IT-based and focused on strategies to leverage IT solutions and systems software, and technology to improve the higher education learning experience. Judging by the more than 4,000 attendees and sheer volume of sessions offered (nearly 250), the education vertical is clearly thriving and hungry for IT solutions to address looming shortcomings and inefficiencies in data and document storage, document management, learning management and cloud-based software solutions. During the event, a mass of higher education officials from IT and supply-chain management listened to chief information officers explain their visions for how IT will improve the learning and teaching model; heard case studies from universities with successful (and unsuccessful) experiences procuring new technologies; and visited the exhibitor hall where IT vendors marketed their wares. Based on what was said and observed, a number of signs point to a potential explosion in IT procurement on state and higher education levels over the next five years.