This article is from the archives of the UB Reporter.
News

‘Super node’ to serve CAS, SEAS needs

By SUE WUETCHER
Published: September 30, 2010

The IT support organizations for the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have been merged into a “super node” to better serve the faculty, staff and students from the two units.

The merger is part of the IT Transformation initiative of the UB 2020 strategic planning process, an effort to consolidate and reorganize IT support across the university to achieve cost savings and efficiencies.

The still-unnamed super node, which will combine the staffs and resources of CASet (which serves CAS) and SENS (which serves SEAS), will be directed by Peter Rittner, assistant dean for educational technology for CAS, working closely with David Yearke, director of SENS. The reporting relationships within the current CAS and SEAS nodes will remain unchanged, with staff members continuing to work for the college or school that they do now.

“By collaboratively deploying their staff, expertise and infrastructure to meet the needs of their constituencies, CASet and SENS expect to maintain and improve their quality of service, while seeking enhanced and more efficient ways to do their work,” Thomas Furlani, director of the Center for Computational Research and interim CIO, said in announcing the formation of the super node.

Since 1997, UB has used an IT support model comprised of a centralized organization—CIT, which provides services for the university as a whole—and the distributed organizations—commonly known as “nodes”—that reside within the decanal units and provide services tailored for the colleges and schools, departments, research groups and administrative areas they support.

Furlani said the formation of the super node should “prove beneficial to both CAS and SEAS.” He cited as an example instances in which specific IT skills may reside within a single individual in each organization, “and this partnership will help ensure that each organization can provide coverage during vacations and sickness. In addition, we further expect that the sharing of technical skills and knowledge across both organizations will yield synergetic benefits,” he said.

Rittner noted that under the IT Transformation initiative, UB has been making progress in “optimizing the effectiveness and efficiency of its information technology resources and services.” He called the formation of the CAS/SEAS super node “an important step in that process.”

Combining the staffs and resources of CASet and SENS “will present opportunities for consolidation of infrastructure, cross coverage of staffing needs, and diversification and distribution of expertise and skills, he said. “As a consequence, the super node will be able to offer new services, as well as enhance performance of its ongoing responsibilities.

“Taking advantage of such opportunities is particularly important in a time of severely limited resources,” he added.

Furlani said he expects the super node to serve as a model for future transformations between the nodes and the central IT organization, as well as an example for the university “of how to effectively combine and share resources, especially in an era of financial austerity.”

Since its formation in 2008, the IT Transformation initiative has been working to consolidate redundant and common IT services throughout the university to achieve greater economies while ensuring that the unique needs of each node’s constituency continue to be met.

In addition to the creation of the super node, Furlani cited as a transformation success story the consolidation of UB’s e-mail service under CIT. Prior to the transformation, he explained, some nodes maintained their own e-mail servers, requiring substantial investments in personnel and hardware. With CIT providing e-mail service university-wide, “significant cost savings have been realized while improving the uniformity and security of service across campus and freeing up node staff to work in other areas beneficial to the units they support,” he said.