Investigating the upgrade of IT infrastructure to meet the requirements in case of COVID-19 pandemic by Saudi Universities (Case study: Dar Al Uloom University)

Abstract

After the spread of CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19), most of the organizations over the world have been shifted to work online to reduce the infection risk which increased the importance of upgrading the IT (or ICT) infrastructure and its services as the basic level for supporting the online activities and ensuring the quality of these activities. This paper will present an experienced case study focusing on the IT infrastructure requirements in the Saudi universities as a relevant educational sector which affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and shifted to continue the learning and teaching processes online. The success of these processes strongly depends on the IT infrastructure which supports all their activities. For this purpose, an exploratory and analytical study is applied to Dar Al Uloom University as an example for the private universities in Saudi Arabia. The case study focused on the comparison between the before and after situations with collecting some feedback from the stakeholders according to the satisfaction about the IT services after the shifting process. The results have been presented as extracted strengths and recommendations for improving the IT infrastructure and its services by the universities to meet the requirements in the new situation with COVID 19.