Committees and BoardsTechnology Planning Committee
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Minutes of the Technology Planning Committee Meeting Members: Mark Covey (A), Werner Faries (P), Bibhor Dhungel (P), Steve Frank (P), Jim Hewitt (P), Sharon Hoverson (P), Keith Landa (P), Sharon Nelson (A), Erik Ramstad (P), Martin Tackie (A), Don Rice (P), Carole Stalheim (P), Darin Ulness (P) Guest: Matt Dimich Committee businessMinutes for 20 November were approved. Erik requested that discussion of campus fiber needs be added to the agenda. Campus fiber plantErik provided an update on the campus fiber situation, highlighting recent projects (fire alarm system, campus cable television system, the 702 Communications ResNet project) which have made use of our single mode fiber. Four buildings - Fjelstad, Comstock Theatre building, Hoyum and Grant Center - are below the amount of available single-mode fiber compared to desired levels. (There was also an issue with the Berg heating plant, but that has been fixed.) There is room in the conduits to pull additional single-mode fiber. Committee members asked about impacts the current situation might have on providing infrastructure to the new upper-class apartments. Moorhead Electric is pulling new fiber through the Skyway from Olson Forum to Grant Center to supply the apartments. Campus Cable TV will be distributed to the apartments via copper from Grant Center. The cost and timeframe for installing additional fiber are still to be determined. Grant Center should be done before next summer; the other buildings could probably wait. Committee members discussed the possibility of postponing any additional building upgrades this summer. This would allow Physical Plant to work on other projects (such as dealing with this single-mode fiber issue) and allow Network Services to focus on the Sun Java Enterprise System project. There was a question about current level of network service to the computer labs in Olin. Deferring building wide upgrades would still allow individual labs, such as the video editing / media lab, to be upgraded. The cost for the recent upgrade to Jones came in under budget (currently at slightly less than $30K); other work on the Outreach Center is currently at ~$2K. Given the low reserves in this year's budget, there is limited opportunity to deal with the single-mode fiber issue this year. Erik will provide more details on cost and timeframe at the next committee meeting. ResNet discussionThe contract for 702 Communications to provide ResNet service has been signed, with the switchover planned to take place over Christmas break. Drilling under 8th St. was not necessary, as 702 Communications has an access point near Grant Center. Some of our single-mode fiber will be used to transport the data from that access point back to Lorentzsen. This shaves $250 a month off the cost of service from 702, bringing the monthly cost for bandwidth and helpdesk to $4350. Reduced bandwidth from the State of Minnesota for the main campus network will save $2100 per month. President's Council currently does not favor phasing out the modem pool, but 702 has agreed to reduce the cost of the modem pool by $350 per month. (Analysis of the modem logs for the fall semester indicate that 271 employees and 340 students have logged on through the modem pool at least once.) 702 Communications will offer higher-bandwidth packages to students who want higher levels of connectivity than that provided by the 5 Mbps bandwidth the college is subsidizing for the ResNet. Example packages for 512 Kbps and 768 Kbps have been given, but these haven't been finalized yet. Any students who opt for the higher bandwidth packages will be moved to a separate pipeline, which will reduce traffic for those students who remain on the basic ResNet. Committee members discussed how to publicize these changes to the students, such as posting a TechNews story and/or sending out a Cobweb Express, but no plan was finalized. Sun Java Enterprise System project proposalKeith provided an overview of the proposed Sun JES project. The impetus for investigating a commercial solution for our network application environment derives from a number of issues: confusion and frustration among users concerning the various accounts they have (gloria, Windows CCM and Exchange server, Mac OS X, faculty login, etc.); limited access to network storage space by students and confusion about different network shares; problems with the Exchange server; reluctance to move into the Windows Active Directory environment when support for Windows NT domains is terminated next spring. Computer Services, Academic Computing, the campus webmaster and others have met with representatives from two leading vendors in the area of directory services and enterprise systems: Sun and Novell. Sun was chosen for further proposal development, based on our existing expertise/experience on campus with Sun systems, the suite of applications that would be made available, and the licensing strategy provided by Sun. The Sun Java Enterprise System would provide LDAP directory services as a central authentication for services, file access and printing; unified calendar and messaging services; a user-friendly environment for developing new web application and support for existing web applications; and a portal environment that would allow members of the Concordia community to customize their access to these features. Our annual licensing costs for Sun JES would be $50 per faculty and administrative staff FTE, or about $12.5K. With this system and licensing we can have as many accounts (faculty, staff, students, prospective students, alumni, etc) that we decide to maintain. Prospective students could sign up for accounts and see information and have services provided that would be appropriate to their role as prospective students. As they become students and then alumni, the information and services provided on their account would change with their changing roles. The hardware and licensing needed for this new system will be proposed for next year's technology budget. There would be a number of costs this year, though, in preparation for implementing the new system. These would include: contracting for a Sun Professional Services team to come on campus to examine our current systems and provide a roadmap for moving to our desired configuration with JES (highly recommended, ~$10K to $12K per week, plus expenses); training opportunities for Computer Services and other staff involved in implementing, maintaining and developing the system; acquisition of hardware to develop a test environment to begin setting up these systems before transferring them to the production environment. Committee members discussed whether it would be appropriate to use the funds earmarked for innovative proposals to support these initial costs. Werner also suggested looking at the items in the current technology budget that have been designated priority 2, to see if any of them can be deferred in order to allow the Sun project to go forward. Steve and Keith will report back at the next meeting. Next meeting will be December 11th. Items for the agenda include: campus fiber concerns follow-up; Sun project follow-up (financing this year's needs); communicating with departments about the technology budget process; determining agenda for next semester; review of some aspects of the SA survey results Keith Landa |
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