In my direct experience, Harvard's faculty (professors) are a lot more involved in the leadership of the university than at most universities. There's a reason Harvard's arts & sciences school, including the undergraduate College, is called the Faculty of Arts & Sciences (FAS) -- the Faculty really do have a lot of power there.

I worked in the FAS IT department for several years in the mid-to-late 00's. A huge chunk of my team's projects were custom software solutions, necessitated by top professors being extremely picky about random things, which prevented use of off-the-shelf software.

Pretty much nothing in this Crimson article lines up with my experience. Maybe things have changed a lot since I worked there, but I'm skeptical.