Introduction

The July 1, 2003 - June 30, 2004 academic and fiscal year was the first complete cycle where ITS operated under its new organizational structure and planning framework. The prior year saw the establishment of ITS, including an ITS fiscal structure, and adoption of a planning framework that included planning principles and strategic goals. ITS began 2003-04 with a prioritized set of projects as its operational plan, which was assessed and modified at mid-year. This process also fed the development of a proposed operational plan for 2004-05.

Despite the resource challenges that continue to confront the entire campus, ITS has many achievements to report. There was improvement across a wide variety of services to students, faculty and staff. ITS managed to implement new services even as it maintained an ever-expanding set of core services. Increasingly, the Divisions, Schools and Colleges turn to online services and systems to carry out their missions - to respond to student needs, develop or expand programs, and to cope with budget cuts. The user community sees online services and resources as a way to achieve efficiencies, deliver course content, access library materials, reduce paperwork, share proposals, provide better service and make informed decisions. We are ever more dependent on online services and they grow more complex. The accomplishments listed demonstrate this situation.

Success has many parents and this report reflects the contributions of many partners. We have tried to be specific in noting the roles of other offices. CETL and the University Libraries are key partners. A special kudos goes to the IT staff distributed in offices throughout the campus. Known primarily as the Technology Coordinators (TCs) they provide first-level support to the day-to-day needs of many users. CAS Computing, Business, Education and a number of department-based staff provide an important linkage to ITS and assist in many projects.

But most of all, the men and women of ITS deserve credit for the activities highlighted in this report. In many ways this report is merely the Headline News version - there are many customer interactions and behind-the-scenes contributions achieved every day. Thank you to the ITS staff and our student workforce for their hard work and perseverance.

This report is organized by ITS' seven strategic goals. Here are the main topics:

Goal 1. Infrastructure: growth and improved utilization of servers; impact of new facilities, improvements to existing services.

Goal 2. Teaching and Learning: faculty use of technology; classroom improvements, library support, public computing labs.

Goal 3. Support for Research: establishment of Research IT group, high-performance computing

Goal 4. Support and empower users: communication with users, desktop support, helpdesk services, web site support

Goal 5. Integrated systems for campus management: MyUAlbany and Peoplesoft, data warehouse, financial systems, web support

Goal 6. Security and privacy: establishment of a dedicated security function, user security, copyright

Goal 7. New technologies: web content, server and OS developments, converged voice and data services

Office of the Chief Information Officer
University Administration Building 400
1400 Washington Ave.
Albany, NY, 12222

• The new student information system and MyUAlbany completed a full year in production on IBM p650 servers acquired in spring 2003. Fall 2003, the first full semester on the new Peoplesoft-based system, was smooth. To correct system overload problems in January ITS has added additional web servers and load balancing services to better manage peak demand.
  
  
• Over 10,000 students and 1,400 faculty depend on the campus Webmail server, which also acts as the Internet e-mail leave/entry point for Exchange users. More than 400,000 messages a day are processed. A more robust server was acquired to meet increased volumes of mail generally and more specifically to address the security requirements of spam filtering, virus scanning, and filtering of extensions and attachments.
  
  
• Server utilization was improved while reducing the number of machines under management by decommissioning ~15 servers through consolidation activities, without closing vital services. Opportunities for further server consolidation have been identified.
  
  
• A Storage-area Network (SAN) was acquired in spring 2004 to address multiple needs: back-up and storage of the database housing student, enrollment, course and employee data; storage requirements of research projects and the continuing exponential growth of file storage by the user community. In testing, the SAN has cut the time for database back-up procedures by more than half. The SAN goes into production in fall 2004.
  
  
• The electrical system in CS-5 was upgraded during intersession and twelve servers were relocated from MSC-209 to CS-5 because of unstable power and cooling conditions. The latter must be resolved for MSC-209 to remain a viable satellite location for servers.
  
  
• Student Health Service and Advancement (Dialin¿ Danes) entered into server management arrangements with ITS. Increasingly, departments have approached ITS for server management, recognizing that server upgrades, operations, back-up and security matters are often beyond the resources of individual offices.
  
  
• Every click to online information travels through the main campus Internet router. It is the hub of our network. It was upgraded in January 2004 to accommodate growth in network ports and increased off-campus and wireless access, and for security purposes.
  
  
• With the expiration of a 10-year, single-vendor contract for phone service the Telecommunications group designed and negotiated new contracts for phone services to begin August, 2004. In 2004-05 the campus will implement a new voicemail system with increased functionality, maintain all current phone services and yield immediate annual savings of over $500,000.
  
  
• Campus switchboard services entered a new era with the debut of the automated voice response service from Parlance Co. This service enables a name/number-finder that is always-on, and has an extremely high connection rate.
  
  
• New construction and rehab projects mean growth and improvement to the university¿s physical appearance. It also means expansion of the communications and computing infrastructure. More places, more data ports, more desktops, more phones. ITS¿ facilities projects during 2003-04 included installations at Nanofab I and LSRB, designs for Nanofab II, New Entry, and Cancer Genomics among many others. The projects add over 1400 phone ports and 2300 data ports to the inventory (10% and 15% respectively). Some staff are managing 15-25 projects at a time.
  
  
• Wireless services continued in pilot mode in the Libraries. A draft strategy for expanding wireless services was developed and awaits campus prioritization and funding.

• Nearly 200 faculty use WebCT, the campus course-management system, to provide an online component for their courses. Each semester over 10,000 students access these online ¿spaces¿ for content, discussions and quizzes. In partnership with CETL, ITS upgraded the WebCT software to a more current version.
  
  
• In association with Facilities and Space Management, ITS installed new technology in the renovated Humanities classrooms bringing the percentage of registrar-scheduled spaces with fixed technology to 38%. Faculty teaching in the Lecture Centers report utilization of the instructor PC at 90%, Document camera at 89%, CD/DVD at 85% and 50% reported bringing a laptop to use.
  
  
• The Office of Undergraduate Studies and ITS commissioned a multi-office staff team to recommend needed acquisitions to synchronize software packages throughout ITS, CETL, University Libraries and school labs. The outcome included a process for ongoing management of software acquisitions. Implementation of the recommendations in 2004-05 depends on available resources.
  
  
• Faculty in Languages, Music, Education and other departments are using the Media server to post video and audio files for their classes. ITS manages this server in partnership with CETL. This service, still in pilot, presents challenges since lack of resources prevents it from running as a production service.
  
  
• The University Libraries readied for conversion to the ExLibris library management system scheduled for summer 2004. ITS, which manages the library system servers, partnered with library project staff throughout the planning process to ensure a smooth start-up.
  
  
• The University at Albany continues as the largest provider of full online graduate courses and degrees through the SUNY Learning Network. During 2003-04, 1611 students enrolled in online courses. Led by the School of Education, online courses were also taught by faculty in the School of Social Welfare, School of Public Heath and the College of Arts and Sciences.
  
  
• Over 500 public PCs are available to students on campus. In its annual PC replacement cycle ITS distributes 2yr-old PCs to departmental computing labs. Business, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geography, English, Psychology, SISP and the D/T Grad lab benefited from this program in 2003-04. Unfortunately, this number will decline in 2004-05 to reflect cutbacks in new purchases.

• The joint effort of the VPR and CIO resulting in the establishment of the Research IT group is the focal point of this year. This is both a strategic and tactical accomplishment to create a mechanism for serving the IT needs of researchers. The group¿s mission is to support funded researchers in all phases of pre-grant, project, and post-grant activity. Brian Macherone was recruited to head the new unit and two technical staff will join the unit in September 2004.
  
  
• In partnership with Apple, computing to support Life Sciences research ¿ Bioinformatics ¿ was energized with the acquisition of an Apple Xserve cluster. ITS and CAS worked together on this acquisition which included a gift component to the Capital Campaign.
  
  
• Research computing took a further step forward in partnership with IBM by acquiring a 64-node Linux cluster and campus designation as one of five pilot sites using Linux on the pSeries of IBM servers. Already, UA has been first to port Amber, CAVEAT and R software to the Linux on pSeries platform. Researchers in Chemistry and Anthropology have begun experiments using this powerful computational tool.
  
  
• ITS was part of a UA team in a joint effort with RPI, Stony Brook and Brookhaven National Labs to submit a proposal to NSF for funding under the Teragrid program. Grid computing is a method of harnessing distributed computing and network resources to work on complex scientific problems. Research projects were identified by faculty in Nanosciences, Atmospheric Sciences and Computer Science; ITS staff designed the proposed networking requirements together with the other participants and with NYSERNet. Although the proposal was not funded it was a fruitful collaboration and we were educated about the challenges of supporting Grid computing initiatives.
  
  
• NYSERNet is the provider of both campus connections to the Internet: our ¿commodity¿ connection for general e-mail and web traffic; and the connection to Internet2, the national research network. The CIO serves on the board of NYSERNet. NYSERNet will transition to an optical networking infrastructure in 2004-05. While this will bring new opportunities for high-speed networking it is juxtaposed with the substantial aging of the campus network infrastructure.

• The ITS web site debuted in August 2003 to provide all users access to information about services, news and alerts, with specific audience segments for students, faculty and staff.
  
  
• The ITS Newsletter published its inaugural issue in January 2004 as another mechanism to communicate with the user community and to showcase the use of IT by Schools, Colleges and Divisions.
  
  
• Another communication vehicle is the cio@albany.edu e-mail address where users can provide feedback, ask questions, send compliments or complaints to ITS. We are pleased with its usage so far. Every message gets a response and we have used the feedback to make changes in our programs.
  
  
• Significant improvements in the availability of software to users were realized. The ITS software inventory was expanded to include MS Office XP, Windows upgrades, Photoshop CS, Fireworks 2004MX and Flash 2004 MX. The CETL labs were upgraded for Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash. Licensing of SPSS was expanded resulting in 149 upgrades through May of 2004 compared to 124 for all of 2003. Another 75 new licenses to faculty for various packages were processed.
  
  
• ITS undertook a complete review of its Help Services activities during Spring 2004 with a goal of responding to user feedback for a clear, one-stop, effective and efficient Help Desk. The resulting plan includes creation of a formal ¿tier-1¿ help function. Lynn Mayer, who joined ITS in July 2004 as Helpdesk Manager will lead this effort. In conjunction with the overall Help Services initiative all voice and data service calls now go to a single number in Telecommunications for triage and response.
  
  
• The Student Help Desk (The SHeD) handled 11,659 calls for the year and processed 5,500 trouble tickets. Some of the volume increase in calls reflects start-up questions for MyUAlbany. Because many of the trouble tickets were security-related, our 2004-05 focus will emphasize security awareness for all users.
  
  
• ITS welcomed Laurie Enright as the new Manager of Desktop Support in May 2004. Desktop support staff outfitted faculty and staff with 728 new PC set-ups and answered over 5,000 service calls. Support for Nanosciences increased 133%. As part of a special project to improve security, desktop staff reconfigured 3,200 PCs for compatibility with the new DHCP protocol (see Goal 6). The desktop staff operates at a user/staff ratio of 400:1, four times the industry standard. Their effort, while obviously laudable, is not realistic to sustain or fair to the staff.
  
  
• The Faculty/staff helpdesk handled ~25,000 calls and ~20,000 e-mail tickets for 2003-04. These contacts represent a wide range of topics ¿ from requests for new services, to account/password issues to questions about listservs or myriad applications and services that ITS supports.
  
  
• ITS, with assistance from LISC and other stakeholders, developed a policy-making process for implementation in 2004-05. A number of IT policies were drafted for adoption.
  
  
• The web sites of the University Senate, Diversity and Affirmative Action, EOP, the Graduate and Undergraduate Bulletins, and others were substantially upgraded by the Web Group. Thirty sites were redesigned to comply with the new university standard and new sites were constructed for Academic Affairs and the Lithgow Murals project. Another 30 sites were migrated from out-of-warranty servers to alternate servers.
  
  
• Over 125 New York Giants players and personnel join the user community for 28 days each summer. In that span ITS¿ Telecom group relocates Athletics personnel, programs phones and data for the Giants needs and then reverses the whole process in the RACC and Freedom Quad just in time for student arrival.

• A focal point for 2003-04 was the debut of the MyUAlbany portal and the new student information system. The student information system encompasses demographic information and all course, enrollment, transcript and related academic information, including historical data. Over 1.2 million records were converted from SIRS for the start-up.

• Along with Student Accounts, planning for other key upgrades and migrations ¿ to DARs, Parking, and the Advancement/UAF Financials systems proceeded. Each of these projects is targeted for implementation during 2004-05.
  
  
• Institutional Research (IR) and ITS partnered to implement the new data warehouse which allows Schools, Colleges and offices to run queries and reports customized to suit their operational needs, for planning and decision-making. IR wrote more than 70 queries for departments, 53 for its own use and trained 400 staff.
  
  
• The Student Health Services and the University Libraries both migrated to the new IFR Billing/Receivables system.
  
  
• Campus Clean-up, Commencement and Homecoming participants (and the event organizers) all benefited from a new online sign-up and database system.

• ¿Same sign-on¿, an effort to couple greater user identity security with simpler access to services, completed its first full year during 2003-04. While the Accounts staff had a lot of back-room work to do, the single NetID/complex password proved a success. The library¿s adoption of the NetID access with ExLibris in summer 2004 is an excellent development. Work on the next phase of this project continues in 2004-05.
  
  
• The Blaster/Welchia virus attacks that plagued many campuses in Fall 2003 were barely felt at UA thanks to the preventive action of ITS staff. Many infected student PCs were intercepted. Phone service start-up improved markedly due to joint efforts of ITS and ResLife.
  
  
• Controls over access to personally-identifiable data were tightened after an in-depth analysis by staff from the Systems and Applications groups.
  
  
• There were no major security incidents (fingers crossed). Mechanisms to prevent hacks, delete suspicious attachments and quarantine viruses (by ITS and TCs) were successful. The system for routine patching of PCs was improved and Desktop staff resolved individual virus/worm problems in a timely manner.
  
  
• A focal point for Security was the decision to create a dedicated Information Security function for the campus. The number, range and complexity of threats, and the increasing regulatory environment covering information security are such that a dedicated office and staff are required. A search for an Information Security Officer commenced in May 2004.
  
  
• A very positive development was the decline in copyright infringement notices received from 330 in 2002-03 to 212 in 2003-04. ITS responds aggressively to these cases; Resnet educates students about file-sharing issues. In January, the CIO sent a letter to all faculty and staff regarding copyright responsibilities.
  
  
• Security guidelines were developed by the Office of the CIO and Counsel¿s Office to comply with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley legislation regarding security of FTC-regulated information.
  
  
• To improve security and management of devices connected to the UA network, ITS initiated a project to dynamically assign IP addresses (DHCP). Campus-wide DHCP also makes it easier for faculty to hook-in their laptop from any classroom on campus. This project involves many distributed IT staff and is scheduled for completion in October 2004.
  
  
• An audit of the campus information security practices by the State Comptroller commenced in March 2004. ITS and Internal Audit welcomed the review as a report card on current practices and an aid in helping us identify potential vulnerabilities. The report is to be issued in September 2004.

• Web content management software is being piloted for efficiency improvements in web maintenance and ease of use that will benefit official campus web site builders.
  
  
• Technical staff across ITS continued to become proficient in Linux systems, both Red Hat and Suse. Servers supporting media streaming, Resnet, DHCP and the Research cluster currently run on Linux. Research into blade technologies and VM-ware accelerated as part of hardware architecture planning.
  
  
• UA and RPI began joint investigation to acquisition of dark fiber to connect the institutions and serve as a replacement for local loop connections to the Internet. This builds off work done on behalf of the Business-Higher Education Roundtable and future directions of NYSERNet.
  
  
• Planning for voice-over-IP (VOIP) and unified messaging (combined e-mail and voice-mail) services commenced. New Entry is targeted for the initial deployment of VOIP.