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Unified Desktop Management

This spring, a planning group of iCIT support staff was formed to evaluate the processes used to manage campus lab and office desktops. Two goals were stated: find a way to eliminate duplication of effort between the two support areas, and recommend processes that will enable iCIT to deliver a consistent desktop configuration.

One of the recommendations of the planning group is to consolidate the automated desktop administration tasks for labs and offices into the responsibility of a single person in iCIT. iCIT management received proposals for this position, and is currently evaluating them in light of the goals and needs of the project.

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Storage Management

Project Summary

James Leckel and Greg Pepper are leading a project to create a strategic approach to centralized storage management. The project began earlier this year, and has been in the analysis and planning stages. The current centralized storage is costly and excessive for certain applications. Our SAN infrastructure connecting to this storage is also very costly on a per server basis. The storage management project seeks to create an effective strategy for storage, and to purchase an inexpensive, highly expandable storage unit that can be used as a lower tier of storage.

Status

Currently, the project team is evaluating storage vendors and products. The storage array will be an ISCSI solution with features such as storage virtualization and clustering.

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Identity Management

Project Summary

The number of software applications and IT services provided on campus is continually growing. In order to create an infrastructure that enables campus members to access these applications and services in a consistent manner, iCIT is beginning an “Identity Management” initiative.

The primary goals of this initiative are:

  1. Identify individuals and groups of people who interact with campus in various roles (students, applicants, faculty/staff, alumni, etc.) and therefore require campus identities;
  2. Determine the lifecycle for these identities (when do relationships for these groups of people begin, change, and end?); and
  3. Form a strategy for managing campus identities and roles that will meet current and future needs.

Status

The first step of the project is near completion. Jeff Rollette, Tom Jordan and Elena Pokot have met with campus offices to discuss the roles of the various individuals (students, applicants, faculty/staff, alumni, etc.) with whom they interact. They have been discussing the identities these roles require, while also establishing a lifecycle for the identities.

Soon, meetings will be scheduled with vendors that have identity management product offerings to better understand the market and identify solutions that might be a good fit in our environment. Progress on Identity Management is expected to accelerate when Jeff Rollette’s involvement in the calendar migration project decreases following its scheduled implementation on July 28, 2006.