WELCOME!! You are reading the inaugural issue of “The Hub,” the ITS newsletter. Just as the newsletter’s name is a suggestion from an ITS staff member, so is all of the content. The goal of this publication is to provide each other with timely information about the services and activities of our department and support the ITS community.
Our customers regard help desk services as one of the most important aspects of ITS. So, in order to simplify use of help desk services and to reflect the reorganization, all technical questions can be directed to the central ITS Response Center (962-HELP) beginning December 15.
With this single phone number, customers from across campus have access to IT professionals who can assist with an array of service inquiries 24 hours a day.
Calls placed to previous help desks (such as AIS and Telecommunications) will be automatically routed to the central ITS Response Center (962-HELP) beginning December 15, 2004. The legacy numbers will remain in place until summer 2005.
Paul Jones, Fred Stutzman, and John Reuning of ibiblio were interviewed for an article in the first issue of Red Hat magazine. The article, “Rocking in the Free World,” discusses the topic of online music sharing, and ibiblio’s role in making legally sharable and culturally significant music accessible to everyone. The full article is available at Red Hat: http://www.redhat.com/magazine/001nov04/features/music/
On November 24, 2004, University News Services, with input from ITS, issued a news brief with information about our new Deputy CIO Robyn East. Robyn will be on campus December 14 & 15 and officially joins us on December 28. The news brief is at http://www.unc.edu/news/briefs/2004/112404.html
As part of a process to evaluate a new system for better management and monitoring of the campus wireless network, auto-generated utilization reports are now available for internal review.
With your Onyen and password, you can access the “Wireless AP Summary” link on the Web site (http://control-center.unc.edu). From this link, you can access wireless network statistics that are updated every 24 hours.
Please provide your feedback on this service to the ITS Telecommunications, Networking group (jim_gogan@unc.edu) so they can evaluate its usefulness. And don’t forget the campus wireless network policy and procedures, listed at http://help.unc.edu/?id=2163.
The Office of the President (OP), the ITS Information Security and Policy team, and the ITS Help Desk hosted a preview of the campus residential network online music 2005 pilot. To prepare for January launch, representatives from the 4 participating vendors - Cdigix, Napster, Rhapsody, and Ruckus - were at the Carolina Union’s Great Hall on Friday, December 3, from 10 am to 2 pm, demonstrating their products and answering student questions. Congratulations to all in ITS who pulled together to help create this event! Student traffic was steady, and the event was featured on the front page of Friday’s Daily Tar Heel.
The Spotlight On column will feature information about ITS divisions, including current projects and future plans. Each issue covers a different division; this issue highlights the work of Enterprise Data Management.
Enterprise Data Management staff members have been working to define missions and services and examining daily tasks to define the work components that go into accomplishing the tasks. For example, the Enterprise Database Administration group has compiled lists of measurable tasks that define business-related databases. These tasks range from meeting with application developers to modeling and defining the databases and tables to loading and maintaining development, test, and production versions on servers.
Like many of their ITS peers, they have done their jobs day to day without thinking about all the skills and processes required. Examining and analyzing their jobs may identify tasks that are no longer relevant and identify needs, such as training, required for tasks that are now more important in accomplishing their goals. They are also examining how their services have been delivered in the past, and the best way to deliver them in the future.
Enterprise Data Management has taken over the role of coordinating the ITS Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans. This means that ITS-EDM will coordinate with other ITS entities to review and enhance existing disaster recovery processes already in place, making sure that those plans are comprehensive, functional, and workable. The ITS disaster recovery and business continuity plans must be coordinated with all other University planning processes.
The Enterprise Data Management group is also looking at adding new services such as scientific database support. Scientific, academic, and administrative database administration staff members have been meeting together to discuss database storage and access issues, including identifying which tasks are separate and which tasks overlap.
The Data Warehouse group, which includes the Institutional Research support staff, is preparing to upgrade the hardware and the SAS software used to manage the warehouse databases. They continue to add new data sources to the warehouse. More information can be found on the Institutional Research Web site at http://www.ais.unc.edu/dw/”>http://www.ais.unc.edu/dw/>http://www.ais.unc.edu/dw/.
Data Discovery and Recovery staff are working with User Support and Engagement to test and evaluate expanded desktop backup services and support. Shortly, they will be conducting pilot projects to test various solutions.
Enterprise Reporting staff have been working to manage the installation and conversion of the most current version of WebFOCUS from Information Builders. This is an enterprise-level data access and reporting package used mainly to create extracts and reports against many different types of data structures on different platforms. It is generally regarded as an end-user tool to give ITS customers an easy way to access data and create reports without reliance on ITS staff. This group will be working with Training and Learning to provide instruction on data access tools and services.
Joe Bray, Application Project Development Supervisor, Student Information group. At Carolina for 22 years.
You’re a volunteer photojournalist for Tar Heel Sports?
Yes, my first contact with the Athletics Department was in the mid-1980s through some programming projects that they needed. That evolved until in mid-1994, just as the Web was gearing up, they wanted a Web site- they were one of the first college athletics departments to have one. It was www.tarheels.edu then. Now it’s www.tarheelblue.com, hosted by the Official College Sports Network, which has about 80% of all college athletics sites- and in 2003 it was #1 in page hits in the whole country!
Anyway, I take the pictures for the football and baseball games, then I go home and do 4 or 5 hours of post-production to put them up on the site. If you go to the Schedule and Results link for the football team, and look at the Photo Gallery for any game, that’s my work.
It’s the coolest thing in the world to be in the locker room after a big win, like over State or Miami. I thought I was gonna get crushed after the Miami game, though! I was trying to get to the locker room and there were tens of thousands of people going the other way, rushing the field.
And you’re a runner yourself?
Oh, just about 5 miles a day at lunch. I do get to help with the football team’s summer conditioning, though. We do what’s called 300s- once around the perimeter of the field is 300 yards. You do that, then get 30 seconds to recover, then do it again, and again. I run with the second-fastest group. I can’t keep up with the fastest.
You’re also involved in other church and community activities.
Mostly through my church, University Baptist. They support the Inter-Faith Council for Social Services, contribute to charitable giving, and so on.
How’d you get to Carolina?
I’ve been a Tarheel fan since I was about 4! Then I went to school here and just fell in love with the place and never left.
What are you working on here right now?
The undergraduate curriculum is being revised for the first time in 22 years, and the courses are being renumbered for the first time in UNC’s history. So all the student information stuff has to be reworked to show those changes. We’re scheduled to go live in Fall 2006. We’ll make it, but it’ll be tight.
