By Apryl Motley - Communications Consultant, Internet2
Editor’s Note: This conversation continues our series of interviews spotlighting the wonderful contributions that research and higher ed community members make to the NET+ Program.
Be on the lookout for additional interviews throughout the year, and email Apryl Motley if there’s a Cloud Superhero you would like us to spotlight in the future. We’re grateful for all our volunteers and appreciate all they do to move our work forward.
— Sean O’Brien – Associate Vice President, NET+, Internet2
Creator. Challenge Conqueror. Customer Champion. Collaborator. In her role as assistant vice president, customer service, in the Office of Information Technology at American University (AU), Terry Ferndandez is all of these. She manages the central IT budget at the university, which includes a wide range of cloud services.
Asked what she likes most about her job, Terry said, “The most rewarding part of my job is the opportunity to create solutions that directly improve our customers’ experiences. I take pride in being someone they can rely on to resolve challenges thoughtfully and effectively.”
Her biggest challenge? “There’s constant demand for our services, so we’re torn in many different directions,” she explained. “Our portfolio expands exponentially, and we’re trying to support everything.”
Read on to learn more about Terry as she shares ideas and insights about her active involvement in the R&E cloud community.
Best Advice About the Cloud Terry Ever Received:
“At my first Knowledge conference, nearly everyone I spoke with shared the same advice. Resist the temptation to over-customize cloud solutions like ServiceNow. Staying as close to out-of-the-box functionality as possible makes ongoing support and upgrades significantly easier. I’ve taken that advice to heart, and it’s paid off. Despite having a small team of developers and administrators, we’ve been able to steadily grow and mature our use of the platform. With every upgrade, we carefully review skipped changes to see if we can revert to the baseline. Interestingly, many of the custom features we initially added have since been incorporated natively into the platform.”
At Your Service Now
One of the cloud services that Terry and her team leverage in managing competing priorities is NET+ ServiceNow. She is the service owner and advocate for AU’s ServiceNow platform, which was launched in 2017 and is being used by 30+ departments at the university.
“We evaluated various products, and I put together the business case for ServiceNow,” Terry recalled. “We needed to demonstrate its benefits beyond IT. I had to champion it as a platform that would benefit the entire/institution.
Terry brought this experience and expertise to her tenure as the chair of the NET+ SeviceNow Service Advisory Group. While she became chair in May of 2024, she’s been an active participant in the group for many years. “I’m a strong supporter of the NET+ ServiceNow Service Advisory Group,” she said. “It gives our institution a rare opportunity to provide direct input to ServiceNow’s product teams. The relationships I’ve built with peers at other universities have led to meaningful collaboration, idea exchange, and the ability to showcase our work.”
The forum NET+ provides for peer exchanges has proved invaluable to her and others as research and education (R&E) IT professionals strive to align the right cloud services platforms with the right purpose. While Terry’s closest work is with the ServiceNow platform, AU has also benefited from NET+ consortium pricing for other services, such as Canvas, Canvas Catalog, Splunk, Duo, and Zoom.
Feedback, Fortitude, and Future Opportunities
Through NET+, the R&E community has a real voice in shaping cloud services. “I’ve seen our feedback directly influence the NET+ ServiceNow offering,” Terry noted. “For instance, we helped secure a ‘two-for-one’ student license deal with each ITSM or CSM fulfiller license purchased.”
“We also helped ServiceNow adapt its HR product to better support the unique employment models of higher education, like adjunct faculty with intermittent contracts,” she continued. “Additionally, we pushed for greater accessibility, resulting in an accessibility addendum that is now available to all NET+ subscribers.”
An effective mechanism for providing feedback to cloud service providers is essential as institutions like AU continue to navigate the opportunities and obstacles that come with evaluating and implementing these services. “One of the biggest challenges is that cloud platforms are incredibly powerful, but selecting the right tool for a specific business need can be difficult,” Terry explained. “The opportunity lies in thoughtfully aligning the right platform with the right purpose—when that happens, the benefits can be transformative.”
“For example, we recently implemented Workday for HR and finance/budget,” she continued. “We also have Salesforce and ServiceNow. Each has transformative capabilities. One of the questions that we’re always asked is about where to provide customer help information within each solution. All of our customer help knowledge articles are published in ServiceNow. It gives customers one stop shopping, which made the most sense for us.”
Building Bonds and Boosting Benefits
Making sense of the cloud and its benefits for R&E is no easy feat, but participating in a vibrant community helps. “I’ve always believed in ‘paying it forward.’ I’ve received tremendous support from colleagues across higher education, who generously shared their insights and lessons learned,” Terry noted. “That culture of collegiality is one of the best aspects of working in this field.”
In return, she makes a point to share AU’s experiences— business case, documentation, and metrics—with other institutions. She has advised dozens of universities on their ServiceNow implementations. “Shortly after we went live with ServiceNow ITSM, I was invited to join the NET+ Service Advisory Group,” Terry recalled. “I jumped at the opportunity to learn from others, and the relationships that followed quickly became mutual as others began to see value in our approach. Last May, I volunteered to serve as chair to give back to the community and continue advancing the group’s work.”
“Every time you share your story with someone else, you’re getting valuable information back in turn. It’s a wonderful reciprocal relationship,” she continued. “The bond that gets formed through those shared experiences is so important.”
From Terry’s perspective, with many institutions facing budget pressures due to government funding cuts and the looming higher education enrollment cliff, it’s more important than ever for universities to share their experiences and collaborate: “A vibrant cloud community enables us to maximize the value of our cloud investments, avoid common pitfalls, and create collective momentum for progress across the sector.”