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Within the last year a vast literature has emerged on outsourcing and cloud computing. This memo will not attempt to rewrite that which has already been written and can easily be obtained for more information on the subject. This memo will, however, summarize what cloud computing is, what its relationship to outsourcing is, what areas in the information technology arena are available for outsourcing, and what some of the obvious and not-so-obvious challenges of outsourcing are. It will provide a focused check list on some legal and policy issues to address in contracts between institutions and outsourcing entities and, finally, make two recommendations, one for an internal procedure by which to address these issues and the other for a collaborative approach to some of these challenges from the perspective of higher education.

The Horizon Report points out that behind these emerging technologies/practices are four trends: The abundance of information available online today is challenging traditional notions of what it means to be educators from keepers of information to coaches and sense-makers.People expect to work and study anywhere and anytime.Technologies are increasingly cloud-based. (For more on cloud-computing, click here.)The work of students is increasingly collaborative and multidisciplinar

There is something in the air, and it is nothing less than the digital artifacts of over one billion people and computers networked together collectively producing over 2,000 gigabytes of new information per second. While most of our classrooms were built under the assumption that information is scarce and hard to find, nearly the entire body of human knowledge now flows through and around these rooms in one form or another, ready to be accessed by laptops, cellphones, and iPods. Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation.

Windows Live Office is a part of Microsoft's Windows Live service that allow users to upload their Microsoft Office documents to the computing cloud and share them with other users. Users can also create, view and edit Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents from a web browser using the integrated Office Web Apps.