UCSB Report to JOG/CPG - January 16-17, 2002:

JOG:

The Information Technology Planning Group (ITPG) spent Fall Quarter reviewing IT infrastructure on campus and developing proposals for several compelling projects. To begin, about 30 IT workers from around campus held a “brainstorming” session in which all ideas offered by the group were discussed briefly and posted on the wall. Then the ideas were boiled down and project champions were identified. Thirteen written proposals were submitted and circulated. Following presentations by champions and discussion at two ITPG meetings some of the proposals were broken down into phases or sub-proposals and the resulting twenty items were identified for ranking. The group then used the CommunityPoll web survey service to rank proposals as having, “High”, “Medium” or “Low” priority. Seven of the proposals were ranked “High” in priority by more than half of the 31 ITPG members participating. The high priority rankings validated current initiatives to enhance campus networking (intra-building wiring, campus backbone and wide area connectivity), develop software infrastructure (directory, authorization and software licensing) and evaluate course development, management and delivery systems.

IS&C has documented the current strategy of “Building On and Around the Mainframe” to provide guidelines for future application development projects to be done by the organization.

Integration testing of the Billing, Accounts Receivable & Cashiering System (BARC) system continues.  Testing has revealed that some functions (e.g., refunds and non-student/agency accounts) need more work. Programming is now expected to end in April with testing continuing through June.

The project to replace Novell servers with Windows 2000 servers in the Institutional Advancement division continues.  Plans have been accepted and new equipment is on order. IS&C is also providing workstation, email and calendaring support for about 150 customers in Institutional Advancement.

A Web form to request the download of class lists has been developed by the Student Affairs Division. IS&C is working with one instructor to automate the process of refreshing class lists as the student database changes.

IS&C is rolling out Host-on-Demand (HOD), an IBM product that serves 3270 emulation from a browser window. An important feature of HOD is the encryption of data transfers between the browser and the host.

Work has begun on new Transfer of Funds and Transfer of Expense systems.

Employee leave data are being added to the Data Warehouse. Training on the standard reports available from the Brio Insight server continues in high demand.

The Library is up and running on its new ALEPH system and has hired IS&C to provide interfaces to the General Ledger and BARC systems.

A Konica 7075 laser printer has been delivered. In conjunction with the recently installed VPS software from Levi/Ray/Shoup the new printer will replace the existing Xerox 4050. VPS also provides remote printer spooling to replace the RSCS service that retired with VM/CMS. Overlay forms will be developed with a product called “Elixir for AFP”.

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CPG:

The vendor selected as a result of our Voice Switching System RFP is NEC Business Network Solutions (NEC-BNS).  They proposed a NEAX2400 IPX telephone switch and a Baypoint Innovations NuPoint Messenger model 640 voice server.  Our goal is to cut over to the new systems in late August or very early September.

Our Next Generation Backbone based on Foundry Networks equipment went into production on August 7, 2001 and our migration is almost 50% complete. We have migrated 22 out of 48 links off the FDDI, with 19 of those units replacing their own routing with centralized routing.  We have also migrated our CalREN-2 research groups onto the new backbone. The next step is to discuss and set a sunset date for the FDDI so that we can encourage the remaining units to migrate. Another issue that we need to resolve is what resources and their costs are required to provide near-7/24 support.

We are almost at the post mortem stage for our first two network wiring projects. Our third project is progressing. We received estimates for work on our fourth building but we had to delay that work because the winter holiday timeframe was too tight to complete the disruptive work around the researcher’s schedules. Our work continues in our fifth building where we are finding all sorts of interesting components like book elevators that may or may not become part of our design. We have now requested estimates on the sixth building.

We have almost completed the consultation process that became required to reach consensus on our next set of wiring projects. This process included developing costs for alternate materials choices available in our wiring standards, e.g., aluminum vs. plastic raceway or cabletray vs. conduit, and then laying out the options to the control point representative and letting them determine the choice. One project involved different wireless options for providing backbone connectivity to a UCSB building in Isla Vista.

We continue to see a decline in the number of student phone service customers. We attribute this to cell phones being used as an alternative to wired service.

Location	#Customers January 2001	#Customers January 2002	% Change
Residence Halls & Apartments	2,240	2,054	-9.1%
*CURTS	921	704	-30.8%

*CURTS (college and university residential telephone service) is the phone service we put in Francisco Torres and Tropicana where we don't have our own cable into the buildings.

We are wiring new residential complexes for two ports per pillow (one phone and one data) within the building, but are not buying line equipment in the new telephone system for all "pillows".  We are discussing a 60% take rate for phone service in Manzanita.  We may bump it up to 75% before we order line equipment in the new phone system.