Higher education has been undergoing digital transformation for years due to the emergence and growing adoption of modern technologies like the cloud, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and more. Complemented by challenges associated with shrinking enrollment pools, increasing competition, tightening financial restraints, evolving student expectations, and growing cybersecurity concerns, among many others, chief information officers (CIOs) are being pressured to re-evaluate their technology stacks. The systems that once powered teaching, learning, operations, and experiences on campus are being assessed and evaluated.
For CIOs, the message is clear: Technology stacks need to enable agility and efficiency if their institution is to thrive. Unfortunately, many existing infrastructures simply aren’t keeping pace with the modernizing technology landscape. According to Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of Campus Chief Technology/Information Officers, roughly 60 percent of respondents said they believe that legacy infrastructure is hampering their institution’s ability to be innovative.
To ensure student and institutional success in the years to come, CIOs need to evaluate their existing technology stack, review their IT roadmap, and navigate the trends impacting the wider environment. Here are a few of those trends that CIOs can’t ignore.
1. Moving to a Unified, Cloud-Native Architecture
Institutions need scalable, reliable, and secure infrastructure to enable seamless operations and deliver experiences that students and staff expect. Naturally, this conversation leads to the cloud. But what are cloud-native systems and how are they different from cloud-based systems? And, more importantly, why does that matter?
From a 1,000-ft perspective, cloud-based systems are generally applications that were built and then migrated to the cloud. Cloud-native systems, like Jenzabar One, are built in, designed for, and launched directly into the cloud. They use containerization and often leverage DevOps methodologies like continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD).
With cloud-native architecture, CIOs can quickly roll out new features, maximize system performance and availability, and leverage more comprehensive business continuity/disaster recovery capabilities to minimize risk and maximize operational efficiency.
2. Prioritize Integration Capabilities
Integration is an important aspect of any technology selection process. Some technologies naturally integrate, others come pre-integrated within ecosystems, while others still require APIs to connect with third-party applications. An institution’s integration strategy will become increasingly critical in the coming years, especially as new technologies like artificial intelligence gain traction.
Due to IT or staff capacity reasons, some institutions enabled ad hoc system adoption practices in the past, prioritizing individual technology functionality and leaving integration as an afterthought. This mindset does not cater to the modern institution, as siloed operations simply cannot deliver the experiences or enable the data-driven insights that colleges or universities require. To be as efficient as possible, institutions need orchestrated tech stacks that use a single source of truth and enable real-time collaboration between users, systems, and applications.
Jenzabar One supports an interoperable tech stack, providing an end-to-end ecosystem of interconnected solutions as well as a range of tools to support system-to-system integrations. With a fully integrated IT platform like Jenzabar One, CIOs can align their technology systems to ensure everyone on campus—students and staff alike—gets the best experience.
3. Embedding Data Into Strategy
Today’s institutions are responsible for managing more data than ever before. Information comes from all different areas: students, operations, finances, experiences, and more. With all this data on hand, having reporting and analytics capabilities is foundational to enabling institutional and student success.
Institutions need high-quality, centralized data to power predictive analytics, improve student outcomes, and inform actionable intelligence. CIOs need to bring everything under one roof, maintain a single source of truth, and ensure everyone works with the same up-to-date information. CIOs also need prebuilt reporting tools to support real-time, data-driven decision-making.
CIOs can leverage secure data lakehouses, like Jenzabar’s Data Lake, to consolidate structured and unstructured data into one, easy-to-access location. By using a centralized repository to store data in the cloud, CIOs can accelerate data processing and enable staff to use their preferred reporting tools.
4. Enabling Automation to Address Workforce Constraints
Higher education continues to face workforce challenges. Staffing shortages are all too common, with many talented professionals leaving the higher education sector altogether for higher paying enterprise positions. For staff who remain, this means increased workloads and, likely, more burnout, thus perpetuating the cycle.
Over the next decade, automation will play an increasingly important role, especially as artificial intelligence evolves and is adopted more broadly and strategically. Automation is not about replacing staff, but more about supporting existing personnel with limited resources. Automation enables teams to streamline redundant—yet traditionally manual—processes so staff can focus on more critical initiatives like working with students or developing innovations.
Solutions like Jenzabar Workflow are designed to give institutions tools with more automated capabilities. Institutions can create repeatable, automated workflows that connect staff, tasks, and resources, enabling them to break down departmental and application silos and automate previously manual tasks, reducing error rates and improving efficiency across campus.
5. Putting Student Experiences at the Core of Technology Strategy
While student experiences have always been prioritized, delivering on promises of better experiences is now paramount to institutional success. According to Spark451’s Latest College-Bound Student and Parent Survey, student experience is becoming a bigger factor that influences whether learners feel comfortable enrolling at an institution—or even applying in the first place.
How an institution delivers on student experiences should be driving how colleges design their tech stacks. Institutions that put students at the center will realize stronger student engagement, retention, and overall satisfaction.
Preparing for the Future
Technology is evolving at a breakneck pace. CIOs need to ensure their tech stack not only meets their needs today but is flexible and adaptable enough to meet their expectations in the long run. To prepare for the future, institutions need a trusted partner and trusted technology that can help them navigate through an unpredictable future.
With more than 40 years of experience, Jenzabar knows what institutions need and what CIOs must know to successfully traverse the rapidly changing higher education landscape. Jenzabar One, the market-leading cloud SIS, has you covered. Jenzabar One has features and capabilities that support students and staff on any platform, at any time, no matter where they are.
You can learn more about how Jenzabar One can help you address the evolving trends in higher education here.
