UB 2020 Projects Update Newsletter
April 16, 2008
- President Simpson highlights success of IT Strategic Transformation projects at recent Campus Conversation event.
- IT Shared Service Desk project team in final stages of product recommendation.
- Student Systems Assessment moves to next phase; Student Services Transformation project.
Elias Eldayrie, Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer, commended the team leaders for their efforts that led President Simpson to comment, at the April 8, 2008 Campus Conversations event, on the value of several Information Technology Strategic Transformation project successes. “President Simpson is proud of the achievements," Eldayrie said.
Student Services Transformation
Susan Huston and Kara Saunders, team leaders, spoke to the progress of one of the most comprehensive transformation projects underway. The first phase of this transformation, the Student Systems Assessment project, has been completed. | See completed projects
The second phase is the implementation of PeopleSoft's student information system, Campus Solutions. We feel that [Student Services Transformation] gives a more holistic view of our critical initiative, and best represents our university-wide approach to the project, Saunders said. The introduction of PeopleSoft's Campus Solutions software will produce technology change, and, more importantly, it will change processes and transform how we deliver services to students, faculty, and staff at UB.
Many activities continue laying the groundwork for the implementation. The project management team and the executive steering committee are currently finalizing contracts and selection of the System Integrator (an organization with experience in installation of this particular product). Staff groups have been evaluating specific functionality of the PeopleSoft system to determine if additional third-party software is needed. Huston explained in detail some of this activity, including the collaboration with campus groups to develop a set of complete requirements, determine best solutions for current campus products such as DARS, make recommendations for document imaging needs, and confer with SUNY Stonybrook and SUNY Albany, both PeopleSoft implementers, to begin the hardware architecture design.
Transformation team members are being selected, and models for providing the necessary staffing resources for the project are being explored. Space planning is also underway to identify a central collaboration environment for the project team. A training plan for the team is being developed as well.
Campus-wide support and commitment to the project is still key to its success. It is critical that everyone at UB is engaged in and aware of the SST initiative. Preliminary development of a communication plan, which will incorporate various channels for disseminating information and providing opportunities for discussion and feedback, has begun.
Saunders added, "We can still comfortably say as long as everything goes smoothly, we are on track." The formal implementation kick-off will occur this summer.
Voice Over Internet Protocol
Infrastructure upgrades have been keeping the project team members very busy, reported team leader Barbara Vasbinder. Call Manager v6.1 is now up and running and cutovers were successful. The IPCC Call Center upgrade is being planned to occur during the week of May 19th, and will result in a more robust environment. Cisco will be on campus soon to discuss features. To complete the infrastructure upgrade, Unity is scheduled to occur in July. This will give us a solid and robust infrastructure to build upon over the next several years, Vasbinder expressed confidently.
The deployment team is currently in Park Hall and there are now 1,706 VoIP phones on the system. | See updated implementation schedule
The completion of the infrastructure upgrades will free up resources to address the E911 and the monitoring components of the VoIP project.
When asked how the partnership with IPLogic is going, Vasbinder responded that the technicians on loan have been effective with testing and surveying, fully utilized in the deployments and helpful with the infrastructure upgrades.
The training team will add user-defined LDAP information to the training session in an effort to increase user knowledge and efficiency.
Shared IT Service Desk
Team leader Daniel Arrasjid provided an update on the project team's progress, which includes a final recommendation of selecting the preferred vendor's service desk product for implementation of a university-wide service desk application. Important to the final selection is the product integration with other campus infrastructure and the economical impact, Arrasjid elaborated. The evaluation feedback that the team received from the vendor demonstrations supports the team's conclusions as well, stated Arrasjid. The recommendation report is expected within a few weeks for leadership review.
Server and Services Consolidation
The vast majority of the Servers and Services Consolidation sub-projects are now progressing within the Enterprise Infrastructure Services (EIS) unit and expected to be delivered on time, reported team leader Joe Mantione. Those projects include File/print, Exchange email, Unix email, SPAM management, Oracle and MySQL databases, and patch management. The only project within EIS that is not in the implementation phase is SQL Server Database Consolidation, which is in the design phase.
The Microsoft Exchange 2007 infrastructure is functioning as a pilot and older Exchange servers are being migrated. For patch management, the WSUS product has been piloted while Shavlik is on hold. The recommendation for the anti-virus product is SEP (Symantec Endpoint Protection) and deployment planning will commence when resources become available. Implementation of the design for Citrix consolidation is on hold until resources are available. Several services are yet to be addressed including web server support, building access and video surveillance infrastructures.
Workstation Standardization
New configurations of Dell computers were recently added to the selection of models including a Precision workstation, a Precision laptop, and an Optiplex 755 with a small form factor. Peter Rittner, team leader, stated Dell is working to meet our expectations in getting the products to us.
The quarterly discount (off the already discounted educational price) that we received from Apple was renewed for another three months and a newer set of models are available.
The team is striving to increase the percentage of UB 2020 models which meet campus needs from 80% to 90% with the addition of the new Dell models. Also, adding printers to the selection is being discussed.
The Workstation Standardization team, now finished with its core mission, continues to meet, assuming the leadership role in establishing standards for student workstation, public sites, technology-equipped classrooms and sunsetting of software in public sites and technology-equipped classrooms.
Strategic Information Reporting Initiative (SIRI)
Gary Pacer, team leader, reported on the success of the recent campus deployments of People/Money and Resource Management. There are just a few reports to be added that are awaiting approval.
With all of the ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) work on the data warehouse now complete, the team is focused on ETL transformation mappings to run on some cyclical nature. Process delay issues are being addressed to optimize the data load, and the team is targeting the end of April to have a solution in place.
New reports have been developed and include an IFR salary recovery report and a PSR and temp services detail report. A procurement card dashboard is expected very soon.
The team is currently at phase 3 of adding HR and Financial tables.
Eldayrie added that the Chief Financial Officers on campus have been looking at these things and the feedback is very positive. The business benefit is being heard.
Eldayrie also commented on the importance of the SIRI team collaborating with the Student Services Transformation team, as similar data warehousing and reporting issues will arise. The future of InfoSource is being misinterpreted; InfoSource is not being phased out. It is being improved with reliable data and a richer environment. The SST project team will be identifying those involved with InfoSource to ensure that the best solutions can be reached.
Plan to attend the May 2nd UB2020 Information Technology Transformation Town Hall. There, you will have the opportunity to hear a research projects IT update as well as view a demonstration of the ImageNow product in the PeopleSoft environment. The Town Hall is being held on Friday May 2nd at 8:30am in 120 Clemens Hall.
We hope you found this UB 2020 Transformation Project Update useful and informative. We are always interested in hearing from you. | Share your Thoughts
UB2020 Transformation Project Communication Team
Last updated: December 11, 2007 1:24 pm EST