Cloud-First Thinking

On campus, so much of our work depends on access—lesson plans, research drafts, committee documents, presentations, student feedback. For many faculty and staff, the laptop becomes the place where all of that lives.

Which means the laptop becomes:

– a vault,
– a single point of failure,
– and sometimes a source of stress.

But it doesn’t have to be.

When our work lives in OneDrive (or Teams or SharePoint), something shifts:
✅ the device becomes a tool instead of a vault
✅ work is accessible anywhere
✅ updates stay in one place
✅ collaboration gets clearer
✅ a hardware problem doesn’t become a crisis

Cloud-first thinking isn’t really about storage—it’s about confidence.

It’s knowing that your work is safe, current, and available when and where you need it, so you can focus on teaching, research, and serving students.

Technology should support the work we do as a community, not hold it hostage to a single machine.

That’s a shift worth leaning into.

How might cloud-first thinking change the way you work?

#AllSuttonedUp