Wrong question to ask; it shouldn’t be CAN they it should be WILL they?

As more and more ‘MBA-type’ managers are drawn into management of universities (as in; those that want to run the university as a business not as an actual university) taking an ethical/moral stand becomes increasingly harder. Combine that with the reality that the (still to be formed) government is looking at putting even more budget-cuts on education it becomes a dire reality. In swoops Microsoft with big discounts and ‘free’ consultants, scans, reports, etc. showing that their stuff is “just right for you”. We’ll ignore that when you start implementing their advice it’s not uncommon to then hear that you’ll need to upgrade this or that, or agree to this multi-year contract etc.

So the options are:

• Chose the “easy” fix for which you probably get some financial support (for a while) and/or discount, staffing isn’t as big of a challenge (and people can be readily replaced if need be because ‘everyone knows Windows right?’) Reality is that in the future this will come and bite you but that’s for later
• Or chose option that WILL cost more upfront in terms of training, on-boarding, etc. and will ultimately detach you from big-tech.

So “upfront easy, later cost” or “upfront cost, later easy”. I’ll let you guess which one is most likely going to happen in this current climate.

PS: before any reply-guys want to go “but actually” - I have worked in an university IT department for almost 10 years. KTHXBAI