Introduction:  The University’s faculty, students and staff are heavily dependent upon the technology provided by Computing Services & Educational Technology (CSET), which comprises Computing Services and the EdComm Center.

Consider the following.  CSET operates the University’s network, mainframe and central servers 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year, and provides many other services, from PC repair to management of the pods to programming support to documentation, directly to users.  During each average school day our machines run thousands of jobs for  thousands of people using the network, while the network moves more than a terabyte of information and our mail server processes 100,000 email messages.  On an annual basis, the helpdesk answers more than 13,000 calls for help, our training center provides more than 1,800 individual training sessions, and EdComm satisfies more than 5,000 equipment requests in addition to supporting all the equipment in classrooms being used for much of the day.  At the same time, the 350 machines in our pods are busy most hours of the day, offering more than 100 software packages on each machine and printing some 4 million pages per year for students.  On the administrative side, the University’s 12,000 plus students all register, check grades and verify financial aid status through our systems, and soon will be paying their bills in the same way.  Staff likewise handle the University’s admissions inquiries, purchase requisitions and the University’s student aid, housing and HR transactions through the same systems. CSET is truly a prodigious enterprise upon which our community depends!

The activities of this critical enterprise are determined in concert with the joint faculty-administration Academic Computing & Educational Technology (ACET) committee, through a planning process which considers the goals of the University, available resources, and the needs of the user community.

Areas of Concentration:  During the past year, members of the CSET worked with faculty members of the ACET to revise the University’s long-range IT plan, and to ensure alignment of the CSET’s activities with the University’s goals, which are:

• Enrollment growth to 15,000 students
• Continued emphasis on excellence in teaching
• Increased levels of funded research
• Creation of an inclusive University community
• Support for the University’s capital campaign.

However, maintaining all this activity during a period of planned growth takes resources, and at this time the activities of the entire campus are severely constrained by declining state budgets.  In light of the University’s goals, the heavy dependence of the University on technology, and the fragile fiscal environment, Computing Services and EdComm have focused on the following activities this year. 

• Maintain a stable but current technological environment to support the on-going work of faculty, students and staff.
• Concentrate on projects that enhance efficiency and, where possible, produce cost savings, to allow growth in fiscally-restrained times.
• Support projects that contribute to the core University activities of teaching and research.
• Support the University community through participation and collaboration with other university departments, SUNY, and the higher education community
• [because of the unique nature of technology and the threats of mischief to those who use it] provide for the security of our technological infrastructure.

CSET’s accomplishments in these areas are presented below.

Maintain a stable, current environment:  When things don’t work as expected, having the latest classroom equipment or the fastest network in the Northeast can be worse for faculty and students than having no equipment or network in the first place.  Therefore, once a service or feature is implemented the first priority of CSET is to ensure that it works consistently, performs well, and is available for use when needed.

During this past academic year, in order to ensure solid stability and performance, we have

• installed or upgraded a range of new hardware from a new IBM mainframe (to assure web registration performance) to Unix servers (Blackboard and statmart) to Pod equipment to our tape robot,
• upgraded software from the operating systems of our mainframe and servers to our business applications,
• rewired the Hinman dorm complex to replace older, low performance cable, and
• upgraded approximately ¼ of network equipment. 

Support for Teaching & Research:  Academic Computing and EdComm directly support teaching and research.  Among the activities supporting teaching this past year are:

• expansion of capacity for the use of the Blackboard course management system through upgrades of equipment and software which allowed a 50% growth to more than 900 class sections, \
• installation of a test version of DARS on-line for direct use by students,
• enhancement of network storage to allow “H” drive disk space to students using the pods,
• assistance to the Library for the upgrade of the Aleph Library system,
• development of a consistent set-up for adaptive technology in the pods and library to assist students with disabilities,
• creation of 3 more multimedia classrooms, and
• enhancement of 3 more classrooms with projection equipment. 

Among the activities supporting research this year are:

• the upgrade of the “statmart” (commercial database) server,
• installation of the “joint-study” TJW/IBM “gift” mainframe,
• creation of a statistical “Community of Support”, and
• the opening of the 24-hour Research Support Center in the Computing Center Building.

Efficiencies and Cost Savings:  Many activities of CSET are designed to help departments and users operate or process more efficiently, or to eliminate expensive manual processing.  Some of the projects that have or will improve efficiencies on campus are:

• implementation of a new and more reliable webmail product,
• installation of network monitors to track and respond to network performance problems, 
• upgrade of the commodity internet to OC-3,
• implementation of “guaranteed” slices of network access for students, which prevents network blocking from file-transfer programs and rewards modest users of the network with better response times,
• move of course scheduling and the schedule of classes to the web,
• implementation of Resource 25 to allow decentralized but coordinated scheduling of rooms and other resources,
• implementation of “smart forms” for HR personnel transactions,
• implementation of self-service web forms for Financial reporting,
• expansion of web registration to the summer term,
• support for automatic Kronos leave reporting,
• implementation of a web interface for the FAMIS system,
• the automation of departmental disk backups via the network to central tape storage,
• installation of wireless networking in many areas of campus, and
• implementation of project management within CSET. 

Projects that should result in specific cost savings are:

• implementation of student bill paying via credit card on the web through BUSI, which should improve cash flow and make it easier for students to pay bills,
• enhancements to the mail system allowing aliases and mail forwarding will enable official communications to students via email,
• more generous printing limits for students in the pods has allowed departments to shift some of their own printing costs to students,
• establishment of a shared technical support position with the Division of Academic Affairs
• elimination of (another) part-time position in operations,
• buying Cisco equipment for switches with longer warranties which has eliminated maintenance costs on (older) ITouch equipment (savings: about $35,000 per year),
• negotiation of a $90,000 trade-in allowance on older network equipment with SBC,
• move of $150,000 per year of dorm network support costs to the DIFR, and
• demonstration of an on-demand, portable video conferencing capability which operates over the internet which could reduce travel and phone bill costs.

Community:   Many features of the campus technical environment support a greater sense of community.  These include closer communication with family and friends through the network, email, and instant messaging, and better collaboration with fellow students and colleagues through collaborative software products like Blackboard and Exchange.  Support for these products has improved and expanded during the past year.  In addition, members of CSET have participated in committee and organization work that improves coordination and community on campus, throughout SUNY, and through the higher education community.  Among these activities are participation on

• committees:  ACET, Email, Privacy, Registrar’s Council, Chargeback, Enterprise Data, Pod, Cable, Opening Day Review and planning for the Events Center and ITC,
• SUNY organizations: COA (Computer Officers’ Association), SUNY Training Center, FACT (Faculty Access to Computing), CCIO ([SUNY] College Chief Information Officers)
• National:  CCUMC (Coalition of College & University Media Centers), CREN (College Research & Education Network), SIGUCCS (Special Interest Group on University & College Computing Services), EduCAUSE, OAUG (Oracle Applications User Group; presentations)

Security:  As we become more dependent upon information technology, of growing concern is the potential for interruption of necessary activities through inadvertent misuse or malicious attacks on our electronic information and our IT infrastructure.   During the past year we have taken several steps to increase the security of our campus networked environment.  These are:

• upgrade of the University’s site licenses for PC and Exchange server virus scanning software,
• installation of a virus scanning device on the campus mail server,
• initiation of filtering for spam on the campus mail server,
• initiation of the requirement for authentication on pod machines and for access to the campus wireless network,
• installation of a firewall between the campus and outside networks, and the implementation of rules to limit outside access to the campus network
• implementation of VPN (virtual private network) software to authenticate and encrypt off-campus access to protected campus servers,
• upgrade of our IP packet filtering device (to allow limiting of specific file-sharing services),
• conversion of the Computing Center building to card-access to improve the physical security of the building.

Conclusion:  The activities of the past year constitute significant enhanced value for the University’s faculty, students and staff, and demonstrate an aggressive pursuit of good service for our customers by CSET staff.  Our on-going efforts to poll the satisfaction of our users indicates that these efforts are appreciated by the campus, as “current satisfaction” ratings by all groups, graduates, undergraduates, faculty and staff remain positive. 

However, resources are shrinking at the same time that ever-more people depend upon our services and as the University moves to expand.  Maintaining the modern and efficient IT environment we’ve worked so hard to build requires the resources for the continuous, planned upgrade of equipment and software.  At the same time, as is evident from the accomplishments listed above, it is people, not equipment, who have built this environment and continually improve it.  Without the resources to replace people who leave and to bring in new ideas and energy, the University courts stagnation and decline.  Specifically, areas like Blackboard, applications programming support, and the training center all provide crucial, growing services but have lost support people to retirement or reassignment.  Areas like Exchange support, security, and Athletics are growing rapidly with no additional people to support them.  These remain concerns as the new academic year begins.