IT czar Steve Hess sees technological revolution coming to higher education

SALT LAKE CITY — With new technologies like smart phones and tablet computers changing the way people consume information, it's only a matter of time previously they shake up the tradition-bound world of higher education.

Hess has simplified things, moving from 436 e-mail servers to just one and consolidating the U.'s 5,500 databases and 31 networks for an annual savings of $10 million.

The approximately 100,000 devices used

Handling the approximately 100,000 devices used by U. students, faculty and staff takes a lot of computing firepower. To meet that demand, the university is spending $21 million to renovate the former Coca-Cola bottling plant at 875 S. West Temple into a central "cloud computing" server, merging the operations of seven sorely-taxed data centers on campus. Those centers are at full capacity, and near all of the stopgap space at the Marriott Library has been filled.