Download IT-Infrastructure futures

ITINFRASTRUCTU
RE FUTURES
1/26/2012
The future of campus IT services
The main recommendations of the IT Infrastructure
Futures group are that uConnect be moved to the
campus DNS root (ucdavis.edu), a central SharePoint
instance be provisioned in uConnect for general campus
use, horizontal wiring projects proceed, and finally, a
comprehensive service catalog process be developed to
document customer-facing business services and their
IT-Infrastructure futures
interrelationships with underlying technical services.
IT-Infrastructure futures
THE FUTURE OF CAMPUS IT SERVICES
SUMMARY OF WORKGROUP FINDINGS
The large number of topics considered by the committee suggested that the best organizational strategy
for considering the wide range of subjects be a split into subgroups. Each subgroup was composed of
interested committee members, and each subgroup went through a vetting process of voting on the top
two to three topics to address. A great many other topics were left out so that the overall process could
provide a minimal set of important recommendations to Vice Provost Siegel.
The top recommendations from each subgroup:
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uConnect should be moved to the campus DNS root, ucdavis.edu, and provide
DNS/Kerberos/LDAP services for the rest of campus, with appropriate Active
Directory schema extensions for MacOS and Linux integration
A central SharePoint instance should be provisioned in uConnect for use by the
campus
The campus should move forward with horizontal wiring projects
Develop a comprehensive service catalog process that documents all of the
customer-facing business services and the underlying technical services and
that allows distributed IT organizations across campus to document their own
services and the interrelationships between their services and IET-provided
services
The details of the individual subgroup discussions are as follows.
Access Subgroup
The access subgroup recommends that the campus move toward a consolidated domain
name/authentication/directory/certificate service (DNS/Kerberos/LDAP/PKI) using Microsoft services in uConnect. This
eliminates duplication of services between uConnect and the current campus offerings, as well as provides for additional
functionality. Email and calendaring should be provided in uConnect for free at a minimum level, with optional cloud offerings
such as Gmail and Office 365 integrated. Extensions to uConnect’s Active Directory schema should be implemented in order to
provide for MacOS and Linux integration.
Collaboration Subgroup
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The members of the collaboration subgroup recommend that a campus instance of SharePoint be provisioned in uConnect for
general use. It is believed that a central campus SharePoint implementation would provide functionality superior in many
respects to SmartSite and eDoc Lite. In particular, there have been recurring concerns with SmartSite amongst faculty. The
subgroup believes that a committee similar to the campus email workgroup should examine the pedagogical and technical
issues with SmartSite and the other Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS) on campus. However, this should not
detract from providing for a campus SharePoint implementation.
The second issue that the subgroup considered was that of access to campus data sources. The subgroup recommends that data
owners be properly identified and that data requests have a clear process with a short turnaround. Furthermore, the sharing
model should be one wherein all non-private, non-confidential data is available for read access to everyone.
The last issue the subgroup considered was centrally managed video conferencing. The subgroup recommends that the campus
move forward in providing this infrastructure in partnership with the School of Law and Graduate School of Management.
Computer Services Subgroup
The computer services subgroup felt that the topics to be considered were too large in scope to be adequately discussed for
the small attendance of the subgroup.
Network Subgroup
The network subgroup recommends that the campus move forward with horizontal wiring projects which will bring existing
facilities up to modern network wiring standards.
The network subgroup recommends that the campus move forward with 802.1x security on the wired network, coupled with
certificates (either personal, or via Certificate services in uConnect).
The network subgroup recommends that unencrypted Moobilenet wireless service be phased-out in favor of encrypted
MoobilenetX wireless service.
The network subgroup recommends that network security focus on identity management rather than IP address based solutions.
The committee considered, but did not completely discuss, the topic of VLAN sprawl and the centralization of firewall services
within NOC. The committee recommends that this subject be thoroughly vetted moving forward.
Organization Subgroup
This committee became a metagroup of all of the other groups in the sense that if none of the recommendations of the
organization subgroup are implemented, all other recommendations from the various committees will be difficult and
expensive to implement. The general consensus of the organization subgroup is that the overall good of the campus should be
considered over the constituent organizations. The consensus ranking of recommendations is:
Develop a comprehensive service catalog process that documents all of the customer-facing business services and the
underlying technical services and that allows distributed IT organizations across campus to document their own services and the
interrelationships between their services and IET-provided services.
As part of the service catalog process, develop comprehensive costing models for underlying technical services that enable
understanding the true costs of business services, and ensure that those costing models can be readily applied by distributed IT
organizations to produce apples-to-apples comparisons of the true costs of developing services that may duplicate centrallyprovided services.
Using the model of the campus cybersafety policy, which provides a policy framework with a linked and annually updated set
of standards, develop a software standards policy to guide both acquisition of software and software development efforts
across campus, and ensure that this policy provides a mechanism and path for standards-compliant software developed or
procured at any level of the organization to be scaled up for broader adoption.
As part of the transition to a service-oriented model of IT delivery, work with Staff Development and Professional Services and
other campus training units to provide comprehensive training resources to end-users, distributed IT service partners, and
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systems administrators; and ensure that training resources include best practices on how to use IT services at UC Davis such as
formal and well-documented recommendations for how services should be implemented at all levels of the organization.
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