Planning for the future

All topics in this report will correspond to at least one of the three major themes of Student Success, Diversity and Inclusion, and Resource Management. The following icons will accompany each topic as a reference.

Student Success

Diversity and Inclusion

Resource Management

For the 2023-24 fiscal year, UBIT will begin implementing the new network aggregation and telecom switches acquired at the end of 2023. The current switches will reach end of life (no vendor support) in 2024, so the latest generation network gear by Cisco has been tested and selected for enterprise UB use. These new switches increase the network speed, security, and flexibility necessary for UB’s research growth and expansion.

The combined VPCIO technical teams have recently completed a solicitation for a systems/services monitoring service with enterprise-wide implementation anticipated during 2023-24. This will greatly expand 24-7-365 monitoring of the UBIT operations and reduce the response time in the event of an outage or issue.

UBIT is working with the town of Amherst to utilize a road trenching project to add UB-owned private fiber between Campus Leadership, Erie County and ECC Technologies on the viability of UB participating in the ErieNet Fiber project.

Finally, the VPCIO organization will undertake an Identity Management (IdM) system review during the upcoming year including gathering input from various administrative, research, and technical constituents across the institution.

As described earlier, the first year implementing the UB enterprise-wide CRM was very successful. The upcoming year will include completion of the phased rollout of Marketing Cloud as well as full implementation of the Donor and Events Management solutions for UB Advancement. The Events Management system (Blackthorn) will be utilized by other units across the Institution for special events.

The VPCIO team will also lead implementation of a shared data cloud solution to allow the vision of the “golden record” to become a reality. This unifying solution will finally move UB toward a shared data environment and away from the siloed approach so common to large universities.

Finally, building on the successes of the initial phases above, the CRM team in partnership with Academic Affairs and Student Life will begin integration of student success services into the CRM ecosystem.  Arguably the most valuable component of the CRM strategy, this phase will fully incorporate student, faculty, and administrator success for a unified view for each constituent.

Information security continues to be a rapidly evolving and increasingly complex challenges for all organizations, but especially leading research universities. Building on the strong security UB environment, UBIT is focused on the following major initiatives during 2022-23:

• Support the Academic units in achieving compliance with the end user device security policies.
• Acquisition of a managed security operations center service. Although UB maintains effective compensating controls, the state of NY and SUNY have stated they will require 24/7 third-party log management for all institutions. It is anticipated some of the costs associated with this service will be covered by SUNY from their 2023-24 capital funding.
• Providing compliant services and support for research faculty with grants requiring higher level security controls.

Completion of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) gap analysis revealed several areas for improvement. These areas will be addressed during 2023-24 and third-party certification will be obtained in support of the $30M annual and growing DoD grant portfolio.

The VPCIO also led a subcommittee of the Research Storage Task Force led by Venu Govindaraju focused on IT storage, compute and compliance needs to achieve Top 25 aspirations. This subcommittee report recommended acquisition of a trusted data broker and technical/functional support staff for researcher assistance. It is hoped the VPCIO area will lead implementation of these recommendations in 2023-24.

Additionally, UBIT is working with the VPR and other faculty experts on the potential uses of AI at UB. The retention of recorded information from Zoom and Panopto as well as other data sources may be an important step to pursue.

UBIT led an internal group to gage the potential opportunities for the future of the SIS during 2022/23. This review revealed several alternatives including an open-source initiative which will be explored during the upcoming fiscal year.

UBIT and VPF&A anticipate finally moving forward with this initiative during the upcoming year. This will require substantive participation by VPCIO technical and functional staff.

This technology has significantly improved over the last couple of years and may be applicable to both instruction and research at UB. A demonstration in May 2023 resulted in strong interest among faculty. UBIT will work with our academic partners during 2023-24 to further determine best uses across UB.

With every effort, UBIT strives to align with the university’s priorities of Academic Excellence, Resource Planning and Management, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. We are excited about the future of UB, and eager to continue to be a strong partner with the Institution in providing technology resources to advance UB’s vision of becoming a Top 25 university.