its in bits

A Note From Bill...

Last week, I was in Chicago for a meeting of CIOs from many of our peer institutions. As you might imagine, the agenda was quite full. Many of the represented IT organizations are addressing challenges with email projects, budgets, data centers, identity management, fixed mobile convergence, cloud computing, medical center support, help desk strategies, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) paradigm, and more. Not surprising, a common thread wove its way through all of our discussions: the current state of the economy and how it was affecting our related initiatives.

In his recent Stanford Report Q&A about the economy and how it is affecting Stanford, Provost John Etchemendy touched on a point that the CIOs echoed many times in Chicago: "In a period of rapid revenue growth, we tend to grow without thinking about what else we might forgo. I think that a period of retrenchment can be healthy if approached in the right way… I would ask the whole community to adopt a more frugal mindset."

When people outside of IT ask me what it is like to lead an IT organization, I most often compare IT to the arts. IT tends to attract very smart and very creative people. Just as with the arts, where constraints on form can actually enhance creativity, I believe that constraints of frugality can actually help those of us in IT to be more creative in the ways that we accomplish new projects and deliver ongoing support for our services. Rather than focusing solely on what we need to get done, we will also need to creatively focus on doing those things with elegance and efficiency.

Understanding this need to shift some emphasis toward how we approach our work was common across all of the attending CIOs. There was another point that the Provost made in that same Q&A that was not part of the discussion amongst the CIOs, but which I did think of often while I was in Chicago: "Stanford is in a strong financial position among universities—one of the strongest. The weak economy is going to hit every university and every company. I can't think of a place I would rather be than Stanford."

This statement about Stanford has far greater implications than just those financial. There are other schools like Harvard and Yale with larger endowments. Still, Stanford has a unique entrepreneurial, yet collaborative, spirit that will allow us not only to get through these times, but to actually become stronger because of them. I believe that the financial challenges that lie ahead can result in a transformative time for Stanford and IT Services. And as I listened to my colleagues describe their situations at their schools, I kept thinking to myself that I too cannot think of a place I would rather be than Stanford.

- Bill Clebsch
IT Services

Please Complete a Short Survey

Everyone in Business Affairs is asked to complete a very brief (four-question) survey regarding Peak Trip Commutes. Please take a moment right now to complete it.

- Bill Clebsch
IT Services

Communications Systems Is Now Called Voice Applications and Services Team (VAST)

Communication Systems under Jimmy Hale is now called Voice Applications and Services Team (VAST). This change was made to avoid confusion with the introduction of Communications Services under Mark Miyasaki.

After much consideration, the team decided on the name VAST to align with the continuous evolution of voice services. This is evident in the new services that the team is working on: providing Voice over IP (VoIP) over WiFi (a wireless network that uses radio technology), Enhanced ACD (Contact Center), Fixed-Mobile Convergence, Unified Messaging, and even Open Source exploration that will complement Stanford-branded voice applications and services—and more.

The changes in voice technology bring new challenges and great opportunities for VAST. The team looks forward to leading this evolution and delivering integrated voice services to meet our clients’ changing business needs.

And now introducing the VAST team…

Manager: Jimmy Hale
Engineering: Christine Moe, Ron Otero, Joe Kern, Jim Hsu, and Mark Bierly
Maintenance: Gayle Delia, Dan Miller, Rod Wilson, Nelson Fong, and Silvio Castrillo.

- Jimmy Hale
Voice Applications and Services Team

Lucile Packard Children's Hospital (LPCH) Replaces SpectraLink Pocket Phones with ASCOM Wireless Solution

IT Services Voice Applications and Services Team is partnering with LPCH to replace its SpectraLink pocket phones with ASCOM Voice over IP (VoIP) solution, to be delivered over LPCH's WiFi (VoWiFi) network. This solution will provide nurses with wireless telephony, wireless messaging, and wireless personal alarm—"nurse call" mobility functions critical to LPCH nursing staff.

ASCOM is an industry leader in providing healthcare and heavy-industry institutions rugged, shockproof, and electrostatic discharge-protected handset solutions. LPCH will deploy 300 of the ASCOM i75 handsets, with the first 130 targeted for deployment the first week of December 2008.

For any questions about the LPCH ASCOM project, feel free to contact Mark Bierly or Jimmy Hale.

- Jimmy Hale
Voice Applications and Services Team

Stanford Presentations At EDUCAUSE

Stanford University had approximately 15 attendees at the recent annual EDUCAUSE Conference in Orlando, Florida. Representatives from IT Services, Administrative Systems, SUL/AIR, and H&S attended the various session tracks offered at the conference.

Stanford presented at two sessions:

Bill Clebsh led a four-hour pre-conference session called "How to Go Green: Sustainable Computing in Higher Ed," with Joyce Dickerson and representatives from Penn State, UC Berkeley, and University of Michigan. Joyce Dickerson has posted her presentation on Sustainable IT in Docushare. The session was very well received by the 40 members in attendance, as well as the EDUCAUSE organizing committee. We expect Sustainable IT to have a much larger presence at Educause next year; the audience was very impressed with what we're doing at Stanford.

Anne Pinkowski and I, along with representatives from Bowdoin College in Maine, presented a 50-minute session on "Right-Sizing Your Request Tracking System." We compared the Stanford selection of BMC Remedy for our IT Service Management (ITSM) suite with Bowdoin's selection of EMC's Altiris ITSM suite. The scalability, supportability, and overall fit into the IT infrastructure was presented to 120 attendees.

- Chris Lundin
Client Support

Expanded WebEx Web- and Audio-conferencing Pilot

As part of the Work Anywhere initiative, Stanford recently executed a second license agreement with Cisco WebEx for broader use of its web- and audio-conferencing technologies for a one-year pilot period.

This new arrangement permits 200 concurrent users of the flagship WebEx Meeting Center software, along with its integrated audio-conferencing capabilities. The intention is to enable any faculty or staff member to make use of this technology through November 2009 without direct charge. The new arrangement will also permit audio-only conferencing. This pilot arrangement will remove a price barrier for those who need to make only occasional usage of the technologies, and allow all those interested to try it out, as well as allowing Stanford to measure the demand for such capabilities.

This new arrangement also reduces the expense of WebEx audio-conferencing: a new rate of $0.0475/minute for both toll- and toll-free calling replaces the previous rates of $0.05 and $0.0975 per minute, respectively.

Stanford plans to continue using Cisco WebEx's "Named Host" licensing model for heavy/frequent users of the Meeting Center product, as well as for users of the Training Center, Support Center, and Event Center conferencing products; however, this new arrangement will open up Meeting Center to all interested faculty and staff for this 12-month pilot period.

The Work Anywhere program will also conduct a focused pilot project with three cohort groups: faculty, staff, and senior staff. These pilots will make the participants aware of the full range of Work Anywhere tools (laptop bundles, remote connectivity options, security and backup considerations, WebEx conferencing technologies) and seek their active use and feedback. Stanford will use this expanded pilot group to better understand the full range of work-enabling technologies it needs to have in place to support new ways of working.

IT Services is beginning the necessary integration work with Cisco Professional Services to integrate Stanford's SUNet IDs into Cisco WebEx's Meeting Center product. We anticipate that effort will take three to four weeks to complete, while the Work Anywhere program continues to identify individuals interested in the pilot program. We expect the pilot program to commence in December.

- Chris Lundin
Client Support

Workstation Encryption Proof of Concept Results

The Workstation Encryption Proof of Concept was a six-week effort to determine if the PGP Whole Disk Encryption tool was a viable enterprise solution for Windows and Macintosh desktops and laptops. The outcomes of this Proof of Concept included:

Successful downloading of the PGP whole disk encryption license
Ability to encrypt the desktop/laptop's whole disk
Acceptable performance of the desktop/laptop when fully encrypted
Ability to provide enterprise-level support when recovering the encrypted data
Intuitive interface for enterprise logging and reporting of events
Successful incremental backups using common Stanford backup solutions
Early identification of best practices required for this service

This Proof of Concept was considered a success. The next step for this project is to engage members of the faculty in a pilot using the PGP Whole Disk Encryption tool. We are gathering faculty volunteers and hope to begin this pilot the week of November 24th. The outcomes of this pilot will determine whether we move forward with the implementation of this service.

Our special thanks to the participants, including members of the Windows Systems Team, Tier 2 Help Desk, Desktop Systems Group, Computer Resource Consulting, Storage Team, and Integration Team.

- Shirley Hodges
CRC / Desktop Systems

Integrated Email and Calendar Update

In general, email migrations have been proceeding well. Since email migrations resumed on October 29th, we've migrated 10,462 staff and faculty accounts to Zimbra, to bring the total of migrated accounts to 30,733. We've encountered no problems with the migrations process itself. A few accounts had problems with excessive quota (21 accounts) and large email messages (11 accounts). In each of those cases, all their email was migrated except for the large messages, and we worked directly with each of the affected users.

We have, however, received some reports on slow performance and have paused to do some testing and analysis. Further migrations have been deferred until we see consistently improved performance from the servers. So far, we’ve worked with Zimbra to do some server tuning, and we've added another server to the pool. We will resume migrations as soon as possible and still expect to complete all staff and faculty migrations before the Winter Closure.

- Ammy Hill
Campus Readiness

Livermore Server Room

The Livermore Server Room (LSR) will house critical administrative and business systems in support of the University's business continuity efforts.

The LSR consists of two small rooms inside the Stanford Auxiliary Library (SAL 3) facility managed by Stanford University Libraries, approximately 50 miles east of the Stanford University campus.

Relocating redundant, critical systems to Livermore affords greater geographic diversity and additional protection in the event of a level three emergency, such as an earthquake on the San Andreas Fault. This site will operate as a "lights out" facility (that is, a facility that operates without human intervention most of the time) to minimize interruptions to SAL 3 programs and services.

At this time, the project is on time and on budget. For more information on the LSR's current clients, services and infrastructure, and project schedule, please see the project web site.

Matthew Ricks is the sponsor and Bob Moya the co-sponsor. For any questions, please contact Steve Loving, project manager.

- Steve Loving
Project Management

iTunes Fall Music Mix—80 Free Songs When You Visit Stanford on iTunes U

Stanford and iTunes bring you a special collection of 80 free songs from some of the biggest names in music and today's hottest up and coming artists. Just follow the instructions at the link below to download your 80 free songs. And while they are downloading, you can check out Stanford on iTunes U—Stanford's outstanding collection of courses, events, faculty lectures, and student-produced tracks available free in iTunes.

To get your Fall Music Mix, just go to itunes.stanford.edu/fallmusicmix

The Fall Music Mix offer is available to current faculty, students, and staff until December 31, 2008. To redeem the music, you must have an iTunes account. Complete instructions are available on the website.

We aren't able to send this info to every faculty and staff individually, so please pass it along to other co-workers or your departmental email list if you can.

The Stanford on iTunes U Team — itunes.stanford.edu

Enjoy!

- Scott Stocker
University Communications

Event Marks 40th Anniversary of Englebart Demo

Central to the lore of Silicon Valley is SRI's early role in the evolution of computing. In 1968, Douglas Engelbart gave a stunning demonstration of new technologies, including the computer mouse, hypertext linking, and multiple windows. On December 9, SRI and other sponsors remember "Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing: SRI's Revolutionary 1968 Demo," to be held at Memorial Auditorium. See the web site for more information and online ticket purchase.

- Tom Goodrich
Support Tools and Metrics