Information Technology News Archive

1996 - 2017

Where Do We Want to End Up?

by

As we head down the road of changing UCI’s approach to Information Technology, it is helpful to paint a picture of where we want to end up.  Although it will take many years to get there, together we can build a computing environment wherein the quality of services will not depend on variable factors such as the resources local units have been able to invest in IT.  Recognizing that IT is critical to all university activities, our IT environment will be universal to all UCI “knowledge workers.”

Our future integrated IT environment will enable every process that can significantly benefit from automation to be available online with consistent interfaces.  We will use the same IT systems from department to department, reducing training time as staff relocate and/or have to learn new functions.  We can look forward to having data entered a single time and instantly shared with all applications that require it.  Data can be mined to produce information that is made available to decision makers interactively.

IT assistance will be available both through self-service tools and a responsive central help desk. The help desk will be able to triage problems remotely and dispatch assistance from regional support centers as needed. Failed desktop computers will be replaced very quickly, without losing files or user customization.  Security patches will be coordinated campus-wide, ensuring that systems are not vulnerable to new threats any longer than absolutely necessary.

IT staff will be able to focus their talents in specific areas.  For example, software maintainers and programmers can focus on projects with greater efficiency than is possible now (as they are interrupted to handle support issues). In addition to receiving direction from functional units, programmers will have access to the senior developers, specialized technical expertise, and IT leadership found in an appropriately staffed, modern IT organization.  Programmers will use common development and operating frameworks that allow them to take advantage of pre-existing code libraries, user interface tools, and other assets that help them work more effectively.  This results in applications that can easily be integrated as a part of a consistent end-user experience, making them easier to use, and easier to support by other programmers.

UCI will increasingly turn to externally available software packages to augment or replace homegrown IT solutions.  Commercial software will play a role, but the many open and community source systems that are becoming available will be an especially important component of our campus IT strategy.  This will allow us to leverage local programming talent by factoring in the resources of the higher education and open source communities as a whole.

IT services will run on “virtualized” servers housed in energy-efficient data centers. Virtualized servers make more efficient use of capital resources, and can greatly improve reliability and business continuity by automatically moving functions to backup hardware when primary hardware fails, allowing work to continue uninterrupted.  We will create a shared approach to operating servers and server rooms that minimizes costs in energy and support labor.

In short, the IT environment will be highly integrated and responsive, and will greatly facilitate the conduct of university business, research, and education.  This will help pave the way for UCI’s continued growth and excellence.

Information and Academic Technologies

by

IAT

On June 22, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Gottfredson announced his decision to consolidate UCI Information Technology (IT) organizations in non-academic areas.

Effective July 1, Administrative Computing Services (AdCom),  Network and Academic Computing Services (NACS), Office of Academic Affairs Computing Services (OAACS), and Office of Research IT are joining forces as a new organization, Information and Academic Technologies (IAT). The motivation and goals for consolidation are described in the report of the Academic Senior Managers “Big Ideas” IT Workgroup.

Effective integration of IT activities takes time and will be implemented incrementally over coming months. For the present, everything about contacting and working with AdCom, NACS, OAACS, and Office of Research IT remains the same. Please continue to work with your current contacts in these organizations and rely on the appropriate help-desks, as you have done in the past. Our goal is to minimize disruption from IT consolidation activities and we intend to maintain current project schedules and commitments.

With this issue, NACS News becomes IAT News, as part of the ongoing consolidation activity.  IAT news and the iat.uci.edu web sites will be important vehicles to keep you abreast of consolidation progress in the coming months.

ReadyTalk: New Option for Teleconferencing

by

ReadyTalk

Conference calls are an economical way to meet with people, both on and off campus. They are an easy, effective way of cutting travel time and expenses, allowing participants to work from their own offices or wherever they can be most productive.

Web conferencing combines telephone conference calls with the use of a Web browser to share viewing of presentations and documents. By allowing all conference participants to view the same thing at the same time, web conferences can improve discussions, presentations, and explanations. Questions and answers are simpler and easier.

UC has signed a system-wide agreement with ReadyTalk to provide teleconferencing services to UC campuses.  Service options include inexpensive, reservationless conference calling, as well as higher-end operator-assisted conference calls.  Both kinds allow Web conferencing at no additional cost.

IAT-NACS has preapared a quick how-to guide for use of ReadyTalk conferencing services.  Individuals and departments who wish to take advantage of this new option can call ReadyTalk directly, and pay for the service with the UCI PALcard.

ZotPortal: Online Resources for Students

by

ZotPortal

After an extensive campus-wide planning process, the student portal “ZotPortal” went live on April 27 of this year.  IAT-NACS worked with Student Affairs to design the high-reliability and high-performance system hardware, and provides ongoing network and system administration services, as well as housing elements of ZotPortal in separate data centers.

Through ZotPortal students can access academic and administrative information, connect to a Facebook account, subscribe to UCI campus news, student media and entertainment feeds, check UCI libraries catalogue and even search for people and campus web sites from one search box.

Students can arrange ZotPortal’s look and layout flexibly through a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, subscribing to the particular information channels they want.

ZotPortal runs on hardware intended to provide maximal service continuity.  There are duplicate servers, connected through IAT’s DMRnet.  In the event one server becomes unavailable (say due to a power failure), the twin automatically assumes all portal activity.  Within each physical server are many CPUs, configured to provide a flexible group of virtual servers so that ZotPortal can support very large numbers of simultaneous requests.  Data is stored on a disk cluster configured with Sun’s ZFS (zettabyte file system) which provides both redundancy (data protection) and high performance parallel access.