IV. Maintaining Our Technology Infrastructure

 Published December 1, 2004

• Current Environment
• Planning Issues
• Five-Year Objectives

The Current Environment

In terms of reaching the College community with computer technology, we have come a long way. The campus is networked, a steady program of computer upgrades is in place, and most faculty, staff and students make effective use of technology in their work. Virtually every administrative office uses one or another of the College databases. Certainly there will be continued growth. Currently over 90% of the student body arrives with one or more computers, the majority of which are portable. Wireless networking is pervasive and a growing choice among students. Faculty and academic staff are using information technology and are continually selecting implementing additional systems as a normal part of their work process. Students look to the Web for much of their communication, coursework and information needs.

With an acknowledged reliance on technology and computing to accomplish the daily work of the College, there will be a continual need for maintenance, replacement, and thoughtful innovation. Among the components that need to be considered are the campus network, administrative software systems, desktop computers, computer labs, desktop software, hosts and servers, and classrooms. We must look to opportunities to incorporate an even more effective infrastructure, with the central commitment of supporting the work of the College in the most effective and efficient way.

Ongoing effort must be placed on maintaining these critical resources in a secure, fail-safe and fashion. The escalation of computer viruses, the advent of digital piracy and other emerging threats to our digital landscape has added to the complexity of securing our technical infrastructure. Regulatory changes surrounding privacy and security have and will continue to have significant impacts our enterprise wide applications. We must ensure that our networks are secure, that we have a solid disaster recovery program, provide timely regulatory compliance and unyielding stewardship of our computing resources. The work of the College depends upon it.

Planning Issues

Planning will focus on two major areas. The first is assessment of our systematic growth and maintenance, as well as understanding the costs involved. The second is a focus on maintaining control and security of our systems. We must minimize unnecessary growth in levels of system complexity, and diversity, look to consolidation and industry standards in our selection of systems and provide solid guidance and procedures that minimize infrastructure vulnerabilities. Issues of security and privacy need to be addressed as legislation and precedents develop.

Five-year Objectives

Our five-year objectives with regard to the technology infrastructure are based on bringing various parts of the system up to standards, to minimize support needs, and maximize effective use. The environment needs to be sufficiently flexible to allow the addition of emerging services. Wireless networking will continue to grow in use and availability, though we will avoid ubiquitous wireless due to the cost of such a strategy. There is ubiquitous wired networking, but some of the cable plant was installed prior to Category 5 wiring. We plan to upgrade substandard cable to Category 6 cable whenever a building undergoes renovations, thereby avoiding costly special cable projects. Our host computer systems will, whenever possible, migrate from expensive proprietary systems (e.g., Digital/Compaq/HP Alphas) to inexpensive Intel-type systems. The large administrative systems are an exception to this. All academic and administrative departments have network disk space and we strive to increase the use of this space so that all College information is stored on secure network disks rather than on local computers. Data security and integrity must increase by improving the backup processes so that any disk failure will have minimal downtime. Another key activity over the next two years is the development and implementation of the Five College Fiber optic project. This initiative will provide cost effective increases in bandwidth for the campus, allow increased resources for collaborative efforts among the colleges and reduce our ongoing network costs.