CHECK 2012
Moving Toward the Cloud
Migration of a 6-college consortium data center to a virtual hosted platform
Jerry Smith, Russ Francis
Associated Colleges of Central Kansas

6 private colleges located around MCPherson migrated from a standard shared date center to a hosted environment.
They already hosted the data from the colleges at a remote location, so they were already uxed to the hosted environment.

cost to do hosted system - 354K
cost of hardning data center - 447K

consider costs for providing extra capacity when hosting data in-house vs buying just what is needed and buying more as needed.

Things that were learned.
it changes the role of IT and IT staff
relationship building is critical.  you need to know who to go to get the job done.
try to reduce the differences in equipment as much as possible.

conclusions

small to medium sized college is "sweet spot" for hosted infrastructure.
capabilities for business continuity of a Tier 4 infrastructure outrweighs cost.