TECHNOLOGICAL TRENDS AND THEMES

The key trends that will directly affect the university's technology development in the next five years are largely the result of advancing microelectronics technology, evolving comprehensive communications standards, and improvements in software technology. Advances in computing and storage technology have made greater capacity available in smaller packages at less expense than ever before. Telecommunications standards are now being developed to allow virtually any system to be interconnected with any other system. Improvements in software technology such as graphical user interfaces, more natural input/output devices, and artificial intelligence are resulting in many new kinds of systems which are much easier to use.

These advances allow information technology to improve personal efficiency and effectiveness more than ever before. Therefore demand is growing throughout the institution. The overall result is that information technology expenditures can not be expected to decrease as unit costs decrease. Furthermore, the rapid rate of technological change makes early obsolescence a serious problem. It is no longer feasible to make one-time major purchases of information technology. Instead, each investment in technology must be made with an eye to migration paths and patterns; how it will be upgraded or replaced when it reaches its inevitable technical or financial obsolescence. Technology acquisition must also include provisions for the ongoing training and support end users will need. Overall expenditures are therefore still increasing, particularly in institutions that have not yet fully integrated technology into their organization.

Decentralization

Computing power is moving to the desktop. Large mainframes no longer provide general computing power more cheaply than small systems and, in general, smaller systems are now easier to use. Particularly when desktop systems are networked, much of what formerly required an institutional mainframe can now be done at the departmental or workgroup level. However, as demand for small systems explodes, the need for more specialized and advanced services on large systems also continues to grow.

As distributed computing becomes more important, centralized computing organizations are increasingly viewed as a source of specialized services, provider of high-end technologies and unique software, as a safety net for the have-nots, and perhaps most importantly, as a repository for the institutional databases. The role of central support organizations must shift from being simply providers of computing power to providers of services and managers of networks. These organizations must provide training, support, maintenance, information center services, central and departmental network management, departmental system management, database maintenance, information system development, site license and volume purchase negotiation, maintenance contracts, computer lab management, and technology research and development.

Networking

Communications standards have enabled nearly universal computer-to- computer communications. From a single device on a user's desktop, this connectivity can allow end-users access to a wide range of information resources that are housed on different types of systems and located in different places. Just as importantly, it enables a dramatically higher level of interpersonal communication mediated by computer technology. Electronic mail and computer conferencing systems now span the globe and are widely used for instruction, research, public service, and administrative applications in higher education. As technological advances are providing more and more capacity on telecommunications networks, creative applications and advances are, just as quickly, saturating whatever capacity can be provided. Emerging multimedia applications will drive the requirement for increased network capacities even farther. And with the proliferation of distributed information technologies, greater bandwidth will be required not just on network backbones but all the way to the desktop.

Integration

Voice, data, image, and video technologies are converging with computing through advances in digitization and digital switching technologies. In any modern telephone system, voice communications are already treated as data. The latest fax and CD-ROM applications treat images as data. Although most "broadcast quality" video is still provided with traditional analog technology, compressed/digital video is widely used for instruction and conferencing and is gaining increasing usage in many other areas. Most organizations are moving to new integrated organizational structures to manage these converging technologies more effectively.