Projects
In addition to providing day-to-day operation and support of services and products, the staff of Information Technology Services are engaged in scores of projects to expand and improve Business Affairs’ support for Stanford’s core teaching and research activities.
Oversight for the department’s projects is provided by the Portfolio Management Team, which identifies, prioritizes, authorizes, and controls project activities to achieve specific strategic business objectives. Once a project is approved, the Project Management Office (PMO) provides centralized and coordinated management, tracking, and prioritization. The PMO also tracks and provides tools and other support to projects that are managed non-centrally, within specific IT Services groups ("embedded" projects).
Information on the methodology and process for reviewing and approving projects are available on the IT Services Project Management Office Web site.
FY07/08 Highlighted Projects:
- Integrated Email & Calendar
- Remedy Version 7 Implementation
- Departmental Firewall
- Kerberos Upgrade
- Workgroup and Organization Provisioning
- Guest Accounts
- Forsythe Data Center Capacity Expansion
- Big Fix Power Management
- Big Fix for Macs
- Emergency Mass Notification System
- Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
Integrated Email & Calendar
The Integrated Email and Calendar implementation project replaces Stanford's current enterprise-wide email and calendar (Sundial/Oracle Calendar) infrastructure with one that allows you to more seamlessly use these applications together. The new services, which are based on the Zimbra Collaboration Suite, will enable clients to access their email, calendar, and contact lists from a single, consistently-designed web interface that allows them to easily share information between these services. The tools work equally well on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux operating systems and provide an open-source, standards-based solution offering alternatives for greater interoperability with other Stanford online tools. Additionally, the new services will offer much improved support for most handheld devices, making it easier for clients to use these devices for their Stanford work.
The project is currently under way and expects to start moving clients to the new services during summer 2008
its.stanford.edu/projects/integratedemailcalendar/
Remedy Version 7 Implementation
The goal of the Remedy Implementation project is to upgrade Stanford’s installation of the Remedy help desk management application to version 7. While maintaining support for existing system customizations, the upgrade will allow IT Services and other Stanford help desk organizations to leverage new Remedy features.
it-services.stanford.edu/projects/remedy/
Departmental Firewall
In a survey conducted by Educause in May of 2006, over 600 universities and colleges cited security as the most critical issue facing their computing and network infrastructure. In 2005, IT Services and the Information Security Office put forward a proposal for funding to deploy firewalls at the departmental perimeter. In 2006, the President and Provost accepted and funded the project proposal. The implementation of the firewall at the department perimeter, in conjunction with security measures already employed (i.e., BigFix and Stanford Network Self-Registration) will provide the “defense in depth” that will help protect Stanford’s information infrastructure from both external (Internet) and internal attacks.
firewall.stanford.edu/departmental/
Kerberos Upgrade
Stanford’s Kerberos infrastructure is based on a combination of Kerberos 5, Kerberos 4, and Windows Active Directory to supply authentication credentials to most of Stanford's core services. This combination has proved to be problematic around security and supportability, and is hampering the development of new authentication technology because it prevents the use of many Kerberos 5 features. The Kerberos 5 Migration project aims to eliminate Kerberos 4 as an authentication technology in use at Stanford.
it-services.stanford.edu/projects/k4k5/
Workgroup and Organization Provisioning
The Stanford Registries are the integration point for data about Stanford people, accounts, groups, and organizations. The Registries collect this information from a variety of sources, including Peoplesoft, Oracle Financials, Workgroup Manager, and Organization manager. Some of this information is published to IT Services’ Directory servers, where it is used by by the e-mail system to send messages to the right recipients, and StanfordWho to provide online directory listings for people. Other applications, run by both IT Services and other groups, get data from the registry through WebAuth or from the directory servers. Currently, data about people and accounts is published to the directory, but data about Workgroups and Organizations is not. The Workgroup and Organization Provisioning project will provide for easier access and maintenance of this data, more fine-grained access control on workgroups, and will allow IT Services and Administrative Systems to provide authorization data for more services using workgroups.
Workgroup and Organization Provisioning Project Charter
Guest Accounts
The Guest Accounts project will create new computing infrastructure that will allow users who are not affiliated with the university to authenticate and be authorized to access certain restricted resources. This infrastructure would run parallel to the SUNetID system. Overhead from the ongoing maintenance of non-expiring network identifiers (SUNetIDs) will be reduced as non-affiliated users gain access to restricted resources with Guest Accounts (which expire, and have less impact on Administrative Systems) rather than SUNetIDs. Identity management for Guest Accounts will be distributed through a group-based authorization system. Each service provider (e.g. secure website owner) will be able to create a group or set of groups to control access to their restricted materials. The membership of those groups will be managed by the service provider, and subject to the service provider's standards for identity verification. Holders of Guest Accounts will be granted network access that is commensurate with their needs and University policy.
Guest Authentication Charter
Forsythe Data Center Capacity Expansion
IT Services is increasing the infrastructure capacity to meet our clients’ growing needs. Construction activities will take place inside and outside Forsythe Hall from August 2007, through March 2008.
Staff who work in Forsythe Hall will be impacted by the construction. Neighboring buildings—especially Polya (including the PHIL instructional lab in Polya 170B) and Turing Auditorium—will also experience an increase in noise level.
Throughout the course of construction, the project team will make every effort to provide as much advanced notice as possible regarding scheduled activities. Please work with your manager to determine the best work alternative on days when the noise level is high.
If you have any questions, please contact your manager. You can also contact Chai Ho, the cognizant IT Services project manager (725-9347) or Tom Prussing, the Forsythe Building Manager (725-6168).
it-services.stanford.edu/projects/forsythe/
Big Fix Power Management
The goal of the Big Fix Power Management project is to use Big Fix to manage computer power settings across the campus. In addition to achieving up to $400,000 in annual power savings, it support the University's efforts on the Environment, and yield approximately $350,000 in rebates from PG&E. The scope of this project is to set computers to the power scheme of "Stanford Green". This will be implemented initially through a pilot in IT Services, LBRE, & ORA, and then to the broader campus in late January.
Big Fix power Management Project Charter
Big Fix for Macs
The purpose of this project is take the steps necessary to enable IT Services and department Console Operators to expand their BigFix offerings to include support for Apple's OS 10.3 and later operating systems. Additionally, this project includes evolving IT Services' BigFix support towards an enterprise-class offering that capitalizes on the technical support services and resources of the IT Services Desktop Systems Group, Help Desk Tier 1 and Tier 2 and CRC.
Big Fix for Macs Project Charter
Emergency Mass Notification System
The purpose of the project is to implement a layered communications strategy for contacting Stanford students, faculty, and staff in an emergency situation. The approach consists of two components: a Mass Notification
Service and a Siren Alert System. These are key elements in the overall security and emergency response strategy for the Stanford community. ConnectED was selected as the Mass Notification Service vendor and the Siren Alert
System by SAFER Systems. Seven siren/voice towers will be deployed across the campus that will be capable of emitting a siren/blare notification as well as a verbal message and will be implemented later this year (2008).
This service provides a mechanism for fast contact of the Stanford community through a variety of concurrent mechanisms including voice, email, and SMS.
Emergency Mass Notification: AlertSU
Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
The Configuration Management Database (CMDB) implementation project will provide a consistent, single point of reference for key data in the IT Services production environment. It will serve as the data repository/reference to be used by all of the key processes in the Service Model for IT Services including incident, problem, change, and asset management. It will also provide a cross-functional view to data and will support teams whose role it will become to manage and improve process across the organization. The BMC Atrium CMDB sits at the core of the Remedy IT Service Management applications.
The project is currently under way and is expected to go live in the second quarter of FY '09.
http://its.stanford.edu/projectwiki/cmdb
