IT Transformation Town Hall Meeting
March 20, 2009
The March 20th, 2009 UB2020 Information Technology Transformation Town Hall was held in a round table format where attendees were given the opportunity to participate in informal discussions led by project team leaders and members. To ensure that participants’ specific issues would be discussed, a call for questions and topics was sent out previous to the event. Free-flowing exchange of experiences, discussions about project issues and goals, and exchange of questions and answers occurred among the eighty or so participants.
What follows are the highlights of the conversations at the project tables in the form of ‘Questions and Answers’....
Strategic Information Reporting Initiative (SIRI)
Team Discussion Leaders: Joe Kerr and Laurie Barnum
Question: Will SIRI be able to help UB track departmental/unit expenditures? Will we be able to ask questions like "what does this service cost?", “what is the cost of ownership of this piece of equipment?", "how much do we spend on equipment-X?", and "how much do we spend on vendor-Y?"
Answer: SIRI supports analysis and reporting using information that is in InfoSource, or that gets placed there in the future, since InfoSource is our single authoritative source for data. Today SIRI supports the ability for customers to track and analyze department/unit expenditures, revenues, budgets, people, space, etc. The information is available through the People and Money dashboards, as well as the Resource Management dashboard for strategic needs. Through the e-Procurement dashboard units can analyze their expenditures for particular vendors, categorize their procurement activity by the department use fields available through e-Procurement (e-Req), and view individual transactions with history going back to the start of e-Req. The e-Procurement dashboard will eliminate the need for entry of the information into local shadow systems, but still make the information readily available for department needs. Under the e-Procurement dashboard there are inventory reports with original cost, manufacturer, acquisition dates, location, and other data elements that can help with analyzing the type and condition of equipment purchased throughout the organization.
At this point the basic data elements needed to track the cost of services and ownership are not in InfoSource, and so not available for analysis within SIRI. Further the information is not well developed in other sources and so is difficult to pull together. The question illustrates the important role source “feeder” systems have in developing quality information so it is available for reporting and analysis. SIRI is certainly capable of analyzing and reporting this type of data once it is available, and these are good examples of the kinds of strategic thinking to be encouraged going forward. Further, the question gets to the heart of SIRI’s vision that includes creating an environment that enables learning and understanding at a more strategic level, which is where the real value lies.
Question: What’s the process for finding out about this project?
Answer: Visit https://siri.buffalo.edu.
Question: Who has access to the system?
Answer: The initial focus is to provide access to the people who currently have access to the systems that are being replaced by SIRI. Ultimately, the Chief Financial Officers will make decisions about providing access to support their business strategies.
Shared IT Service Desk
Team Discussion Leader: Matt Stock
Question: When will folks not participating in the pilot be able to use the system?
Answer: Currently, the project team is developing the project plan and estimating the resource requirements. The project goal was to complete the pilot migrations by December 2009. The exact completion date will depend on resource availability and the academic calendar. When the project plan is complete, it will be reviewed with the sponsors to allow for scope adjustments and resource prioritization, after which the project timeline will be developed. More information should be available in May/June.
Question: How will the SSD change how customers contact us (IT units) for support?
Answer: The new tools will not require IT units to provide additional modes of support directly. For example, if a unit currently restricts their customers to submit requests via a web form, the SSD will not force this IT unit to accept telephone calls directly. Instead, the intent is to improve customer service through shared resources where possible. Using our previous example, telephone service would be available, but might be handled though a campus-wide call center. The ticket would be logged, and if it could not be resolved immediately it would be escalated to the appropriate service unit. The exact procedures used are being developed as part of the project.
Question: Will customer interface testing be done?
Answer: Yes. One of the project teams is focused on the customer interface, including email, telephone, and the web interface layout. We are currently exploring the capabilities and options that the tool offers. In the case of the web interface, we want to integrate self-help capabilities (searchable knowledge), notification (Alerts), as well as the ability to request services and report problems. In addition, the design should fit within the overall institutional style guidelines and be as easy and intuitive to use as possible. Usability testing will help us ensure that we will meet our goals.
Question: Will asset/inventory management be available in the tool?
Answer: Yes, however developing those capabilities is not in the scope of the initial pilot project. The tool has an inventory management component, and records for devices can be created, searched on, and linked to incident tickets. To ensure that the pilot is successful, we have decided to avoid investigating these features as part of the pilot, and these features are not critical to any of the pilot units. The expectation is that once the production infrastructure is in place and the pilot migrations have begun, another project can be initiated that will focus on inventory management.
Workstation Standardization
Team Discussion Leaders: Brian Murphy and Dave Yearke
Question: What is being planned to have successful Linux installations on the Dell machines and for Linux support?
Answer: There are problems with installing Linux on the Dell OptiPlex 760 systems. Workarounds are being investigated, and Dell has been made aware of the problem and its impact. This conversation evolved into a general discussion of Linux support on campus, including what units are supporting Linux, campus resources for Linux support, and alternatives such as Emperor Linux, which is being used at CoE as it comes pre-installed and includes necessary, proprietary, device drivers for the target hardware. UBMicro is going to investigate Emperor Linux, as they support Dell systems.
Question: What is being planned for Macintosh support?
Answer: Several units, including Management, CoE, and SENS, are seeing increased Macintosh support requests, and there seemed to be some interest in getting an informal group together to discuss University Mac support and possibly work on joint projects. The Dental school may also be interested as they use Macintoshes.
Web Content Initiative (WCI)
Team Discussion Leaders: Brad Beardslee, Rebecca Bernstein, Kathleen Wiater, Linda Kingsbury, and Ray Dannenhoffer
Question: What is the status of a content management system?
Answer: We have a team of people that are working on gathering requirements for and evaluating various web content management systems. We are also working with purchasing to use the State bidding process to solicit vendors. This is an open and transparent process and we will be including campus input whenever possible.
Question: After the initial implementation at the School of Medicine, who will be next to get the CMS and how will that be determined?
Answer: The decision on who will be next will be made by the Sponsors of the Project. The WCI is for Official UB web pages only.
Question: Please discuss look and feel, branding, advertising. How much of the page layout will be determined by the department/user and how much will be determine by UB Communications/News/PR etc?
Answer: There will be an overall look and feel to ensure that everything is associated with UB. The information architecture will provide a means to associate the pages with UB, while a tenant look will associate the page with the tenant area. Content will be the domain of the tenants. There will be a WCI Advisory Committee that will oversee all of the above. It will be a collaborative committee among the tenants of the system.
Student Services Transformation
Team Discussion Leader: Elias Eldayrie
Question: What is the timeline for rolling out the system?
Answer: The system will go live august 2011.
Question: Are we deploying an imaging system?
Answer: Yes. The first phase of the imaging system will be for the office of Financial aid and Admissions.
Question: What is the plan for training?
Answer: The project team will communicate to the campus about training opportunities for the new system. Training will be coordinated with the office of development and training in HR.
Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
Team Discussion Leaders: Barbara Vasbinder and Leslie Evans
Question: What phones are being offered as part of the project?
Answer: Information about Cisco Phone models can be found at www.voip.buffalo.edu. Certain Cisco models were replaced with newer versions in the latest round of purchasing. The new models have the same functionality as the sets previously deployed, although some may look slightly different.
Question: How can I get an overview of set functionality?
Answer: There is an online training program (VoIPTrainer) which should assist you with general functionality questions. There is a link to this training at www.voip.buffalo.edu.
File/Print Implementation Consolidation
Team Discussion Leader: Steve Heist
Question: What is the status of the File Service Consolidation?
Answer: A number of departments have been migrated over to UBFS. We are currently working with the School of Nursing on their migration. Thus far, CAS, WBFO, USS Client Technologies, Architecture, UB Development, GSE, Law, Facilities and the School of Management have been given space in the Collab area of UBFS. Upcoming activities on the File Service are to upgrade the Network Appliance filers and to replace our existing WebDAV solution in order to resolve some slowness issues that have been reported when connecting via Macintosh.
Question: When will the new Network Appliance filers be implemented?
Answer: We are looking to upgrade to the new Network Appliance filers sometime after the Spring semester.
Question: What will the new quotas be?
Answer: New quotas will be 2GB for students, 3GB for staff and 6GB for faculty. Primary investigators on an institutionally recognized grant may receive 20GB of research space.
AV/Patch Management
Team Discussion Leaders: Steve Heist and Phyllis Parisi
Question: Why would I want to use WSUS?
Answer: Once setup, WSUS will continue to contact the end user workstation until the machine is patched. No manual scans or rescans are required as is the case with HFNETCHK.
Question: Is there a client needed for WSUS?
Answer: No workstation client is necessary. Only a change in the machine's group policy is needed.
Database Consolidation
Team Discussion Leaders: Saira Hasnain
Question: What is the plan for database consolidation?
Answer: The plan is to provide three standard database environments: Oracle, MySQL and MSSQL. These environments will be divided into development, QA, and production where applicable.
Question: When will the current 27 databases be consolidated?
Answer: The plan is to work through those during summer and fall of 2009, resources permitting.
Question: What is the preference regarding upgrades on the consolidated environments?
Answer: Our preference is to stay as current and patched as is permitted by the applications using the database.
Email Exchange
Team Discussion Leader: Sharon Arieno and Saira Hasnain
Question: How far are you along with the Exchange migrations?
Answer: To date we have migrated approximately 2000 user departmental mailboxes and 4100 VoIP mailboxes (66% complete) to the central Exchange 2007 service. It is expected that the consolidation project will be complete by September 2009.
Question: GSE would like to standardize on Exchange for mail and calendaring. When will this service be offered to GSE?
Answer: Yes, GSE is currently in the queue of departments interested in this service; estimated date is Spring 2010.
Question: What should we be doing to prepare for our Exchange migration?
Answer: Primarily ask users to clean up mailboxes, unused public folders, and distribution lists.
UNIX Email
Discussion Leaders: Saira Hasnain and Bethany Gladkowski
Question: How is the integration between Oracle calendar and Outlook?
Answer: The Medical School has been using it for the past few years and is performing well with the latest versions.
Question: Exchange server users can't see the central imap/calendaring?
Answer: Correct. You can only see the ical messages.
Question: What is the plan for support for Oracle calendaring?
Answer: The plan is to follow a distributed support model. Calendar nodes are created for the requesting department and the administration is delegated to the authorized personnel in the department.
Check the UB2020 IT Strategic Transformation website for information on the next IT Town Hall, scheduled for a date to be determined.
We hope you found this UB 2020 IT Transformation Project Update useful and informative. We are always interested in hearing from you. | Contact Us
UB 2020 IT Transformation Project Communication Team