I contacted them after finding out our area isn’t “Lit” according to Verizon. Without fiber to our building, the options for speed were limited. I then looked at the NYCIST data collection wiki (http://schoolcomputing.wikia.com/wiki/NYCIST_Data_Collection) to compare what other schools in the New York area were using. I found Towerstream listed there and made contact with them. Price and speed were both taken into consideration. Also, in New York City, Verizon controls all of the copper and fiber in the streets, so going with another company is risky because if Internet in your area goes out, Verizon fixes there customers first. Verizon offered 4.5 Mbps for 1500, and at the time Towerstream offered 8 Mbps up and down for 999 and free installation. It was a no brainer.

Server rooms clearly aren’t a thing of the past in general – but they might be on a local level. Schools and enterprises will have to evaluate if the cost of increasing connection speeds outweighs the cost of maintaining their server room (it probably won’t) and what needs the cloud fills or could fill that their existing equipment might not (most likely, lots).

I think that there will be a grey area for some time. The network administrator will still play an important role either way. Someone needs to manage the myriads of service subscriptions necessary to run a full-fledge operation (be it a school or a corporate enterprise). Someone is going to have to be on the cutting edge of new services and be able to provide an insightful analysis of the pros and cons of each service. Someone is going to have to make sure that the services all play nicely together.

This will not be a difficult transition, most network admins already understand all of these factors. It is easy to forget that outside a small clique of professionals, not many people have the same grasp of what the cloud does and does not have to offer.