It's a perfect storm out there, with powerful forces remaking the IT landscape in higher education. On one side, devastating budget cuts are pushing IT departments to identify ever-greater cost savings. On the other, the explosion in mobile devices is pressuring IT to provide anytime, anywhere computing with no downtime. And finally there's data--a flood of never-ending data--that need to be stored and analyzed. Implemented strategically, the cloud can help colleges and universities tackle all of these issues. Indeed, it promises to allow IT departments to support their institutions faster and more cheaply. But the term itself has become so abused that many people on campus have no idea what "the cloud" means anymore. In this first part of a two-part series, the authors provide IT administrators with an easy-to-understand primer to help them educate campus constituents about the cloud and what it can do for their institutions.