Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
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, as well as how their institutions benefit from their active participation in the community.
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
None of us wants to start from scratch to resolve a problem or launch a new initiative, and there’s no need – especially when a colleague in the research and education (R&E) cloud community has already been there and done that very thing. Or as New York University’s (NYU) Nelya Zonis observed, “The power of the cloud is the people and the connections it enables. Working across institutions, states, and time zones, we’re using our shared experience and knowledge to shape the future.”
Zonis, who serves as chief operating officer for NYU IT, is a member of the Internet2 NET+ Business, Procurement, and Legal Advisory Committee (BPLAC) and co-chairs its vendor management community of practice. The group meets monthly to explore strategies for effectively managing relationships with IT vendors.
“We’re no longer in our respective silos, solving problems on our own,” she explained. “We’re facing similar challenges, and we’re using the cloud to develop better solutions faster than ever before, tailored to the unique needs of our institutions.”
During her more than two decades at NYU – not including her time there as both an undergraduate and graduate student – Zonis has led technology strategy, finance, operations, portfolio management, employee engagement, and organizational development. She brings this experience and perspective to her work with the R&E cloud community and gains its ideas and insights to inform her institution’s strategic approach to acquiring and implementing technology solutions.
More Insights from Nelya
Best advice about the cloud: I look at the cloud as an engine for professional development. To harness its power, we need to embrace a growth mindset. For IT professionals, staying relevant means staying curious. Since the cloud is constantly shifting, the best way to thrive is to embrace that evolution—be willing to experiment with new tools, sharpen our skills, and keep learning.
The greatest challenge facing R&E in implementing cloud services: The real challenge lies in the sheer variety of use cases. Higher ed institutions, especially the larger research institutions, are incredibly complex. For example, at NYU, we have looked at consolidating our many instances of Salesforce, which makes perfect sense from a vendor optimization standpoint. But once we take the time to understand how it is actually being used, we discover how different departments have tailored the tool to meet different business needs. Because these needs are so diverse, a “broad brush” approach is impossible—there truly is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Having Impact
Zonis has been in her current role for four years and appreciates that she’s in a position of impact. “The decisions that I make, projects that I work on, and initiatives that I lead have an impact on the IT community at NYU and on the university as a whole,” she said.
A good example is a pilot initiative called Buying Tech at NYU, which focuses on a coordinated, streamlined approach to purchasing technology across the university. “It’s a process that accounts for how we bring new technology into our ecosystem in a safe and secure way while optimizing the use of technology that already exists,” Zonis said. “Encouraging our community to use our preferred solutions technology reduces our exposure to risk, strengthens our technology ecosystem, and improves our bottom line.”
With respect to the cloud, the services and tools it enables are valuable to Zonis because of the opportunities they offer for professional development and productivity. “Part of my portfolio focuses on employee experience, creating an environment where employees can bring their best selves to the workplace and where they can learn and grow,” she said. “The tools and capabilities that are available via the cloud enable continuous learning and growth.”
“Our work is no longer tied to a physical location,” she continued. “We can accomplish mission-critical activities, anytime, anywhere, so the cloud accelerates creativity and the time that it takes to get to a final product. We’re working collaboratively with our colleagues in real time, maximizing throughput, output, and creativity.”
Getting Innovative
The same can be said for how the R&E cloud community works together, which Zonis has seen firsthand. “The perfect example of the cloud in action was how our vendor management community of practice planning committee worked together to develop a vendor management maturity assessment,” she noted. “The 10-question assessment asks each of the participating schools to rate themselves against a set of criteria. The results were shared and helped the participants understand how their institutions fared relative to others and identified some opportunities for improvement.”
“The cloud enabled the planning committee across five states to collaborate and contribute their ideas in a shared workspace.” she continued. “With a few iterations across a couple of weeks, we had a product that we felt good about sharing with the rest of the community. We published it, got results, and analyzed them. Without cloud collaboration and communication tools, creating the assessment would have been much more difficult and taken a lot longer.”
In short order, the community of practice has a framework for informing its work this year. According to Zonis, “it’s shaping how we’re going to tackle different topics and come together to help each other as we’re making improvements within our respective institutions.”
Opportunities to come together and build relationships with colleagues motivated her to be an active volunteer in the community. “The fact that I can call one of my peers and say, ‘I’m dealing with this problem. How did you handle it?’ is invaluable,” Zonis said. “We are developing a network of trust, so we can support each other in navigating a rapidly shifting technology landscape.”
Feeling Inspired
From her perspective, those relationships are incredibly important and valuable: “The people are just phenomenal. Everybody’s invested in the mission of higher ed and grounded in doing the right thing. It’s inspiring and encouraging.”
As Zonis and her peers at other institutions manage sometimes complex relationships with IT vendors, there’s safety – and power – in numbers. “We don’t have the same resources as our vendors,” she said, “so by building coalitions, sharing best practices, and coming together to represent the R&E community, we can all benefit.”
With all the shifting happening in the tech world from AI, security requirements, and regulations, she says higher ed institutions have to stay ahead of what’s happening next: “Staying ahead of – or sometimes just skating to – the puck requires a lot of resources and effort, so coming together is one of the best ways that we can stand a chance.”
< Back to Internet2 News