IT-Landscape Management in the Higher Educational Institutions

Human Resources (HR) has always been one of the main success factors in business. Higher Educational Institutions (HEI), such as universities, are increasingly confronted with the challenge of efficiently managing and continually developing their human resources due to increasing competition in this field. Besides the instructors and researchers, many other human resources are running these institutions. As in all other business fields, HEI are gradually relying on information technologies (IT) in their daily business processes. This expands their IT-landscape and increases the need for qualified HR to run, develop, and maintain these infrastructures. More and more students and employees are making extensive use of the resources provided by the institutions to support themselves as much as possible. In this work, we will present the results of a study conducted with IT-Landscapes in nine HEIs from four Southern Mediterranean countries compared to three European HEIs. Besides assessing the current IT-Landscape in these HEIs, the study highlights the technical and practical needs, which call for improving the situation in the HEIs of the targeted countries and other similar countries.