You are reading the fifteenth issue of “The Hub,” the newsletter that is published by, for, and about ITS. The goal of this publication is to provide each other with timely information about the services and activities of our department and to support the ITS community, and we appreciate your support for our efforts. Submit your stories and announcements to its_communications@unc.edu by 5 p.m. Friday, August 5th, to be included in the August 9th issue. –MRB
When ABC’s World News Tonight needed to interview a medical expert for “A Healthy Life” program on caring for premature babies, they went to Dr. Carl Bose, professor of neonatal medicine in the UNC School of Medicine Pediatrics Department. When they needed expert multimedia knowledge and support to provide a satellite uplink for the interview, they went to the staff at the ITS Center for Instructional Technology’s Video Services.
Responding to a request from Stephanie Crayton-Robinson in the UNC Health Care Public Affairs and Marketing Office, CIT’s Tom Cox worked with ABC staff to provide support for a live-on-tape feed of the July 20th interview of Dr. Bose by ABC’s health expert, Timothy Johnson. The entire video services staff in Peabody Hall helped make the endeavor a smooth-running success.
According to Cox, Video Services can provide uplink services that match commercial services in quality. Programs such as ABC’s provide valuable information to the public, while giving national recognition of our faculty, campus, and IT services. For Video Services, it’s yet another opportunity to showcase their skills and professionalism.
“I was pleased to hear that the ABC producers called UNC Health Care back after the interview. They complimented us on our production values and smooth operation. Networks rarely call anyone back, so I was proud of our efforts,” said Cox.–CK
ITS Enterprise Applications is working with University Human Resources (UNC-HR) to provide campus with a streamlined process for documentation and processing of EPA positions. The EPAWeb Personnel Action System (PAS) project team is focused on a couple of key areas:
As work nears completion on EPAWeb Phase I, which has focused on replacing the PD-7 electronic forms system, the project team has begun to develop the requirements for EPAWeb Phase II. The primary goal of the second phase will be to add EPA position encumbrance, replace the BD119 and Position Control systems, and fully integrate these functions within EPAWeb.
Steve Seaton, of ITS Enterprise Applications, is the ITS contact for questions regarding the EPAWeb project. Additional information is available as well via the project Web site.–MRB
The Change Management Committee met Thursday, July 20, to determine–from the information gathered across ITS teams and divisions–what the priorities of the project should be moving forward. Updates from the Change Management Committee have been provided at the weekly ITS Service Managers’ Council (SMC) sessions, and The Hub has the recap.
Change management may be only two words, but it’s a large concept that touches on many different points of project management, product development, communications, and customer service. The group was formed in May 2005 at the behest of Robyn East, Associate Vice Chancellor and Deputy CIO, to provide a focused look by ITS staff members at the current change management practices in use today, and at what improvements could be made.
In June, the Committee pulled together notes, processes, and needs from across ITS to create a summary of change management and related issues for Robyn. The Committee met with Robyn to ensure that the group was focused on the key issues:
During last week’s meeting, the group decided to form a working group to focus on the creation of an accurate and updated ITS service list. Greg Jansen, of ITS Communications and ITS Knowledge Management, is heading up the project to create the service list, which will be used by Change Management, Remedy, Knowledge Base, ITS Web, and others.
Some immediate revisions of the change notification system are being documented so that Todd Lewis, ITS Enterprise Applications, can implement them. While the immediate revisions are in progress, the Change Management Committee will develop longer term goals.–MRB
Below are links to articles from and about ITS in two of the University’s campus publications, the University Gazette and The Daily Tar Heel.
Remember, if you are contacted by the press, please gather the reporter’s contact information and e-mail ITS Communications or call 843.9922.
University Gazette
The Daily Tar Heel
UNC installs online safeguards, Covelight to watch over Student Central
–MRB
The new Carolina Technology Consultants (CTC) Advisory Board members for the 2005–2007 term are
Questions about the CTC should be directed to the CTC Coordinator, Dee Marley. Dee is a member of ITS Communications and welcomes your contributions to the CTC.
Those new board members will be joining:
Members whose terms end in November 2005 include
–DM and MRB
Mike Harris, ITS Construction Project Manager, has provided The Hub with updates and several photos to share with the rest of the staff - including exclusive photos of recent lighting strikes and news about new work spaces.
Monday night, July 18, lightning struck the elm tree in the courtyard closest to the east end of the ITS Franklin building.
The good news is that the building did not suffer any damage and the machine
rooms continued to run without a problem.
Wednesday, July 20, the temporary uninterruptible (UPS) was pulled out of the parking lot.
The Department of Insurance (DOI) and State Construction approved occupancy of suite 1500.
The occupancy of Suite 1500 allows the people who were occupying old office
space to move out so that demolition of the old machine room can begin. The office moves to the newly renovated first floor of ITS Franklin were completed Friday, July 22. Demolition of the old machine room began Monday, July 25.
The latest news and images from ITS Franklin and ITS Manning are always available at the ITS Technology Planning and Special Project pages. –MH with MRB
In the spring of 2005, ITS Research Computing announced the availability of a new computing platform for scientific use. Managed by Research Computing’s Loren Watterson and Larry Mason, the new SGI Altix is a machine with 128 CPUs and 512 GB of physical memory.
The SGI Altix is primarily intended for parallel scientific code, although serial jobs are allowed to run. As currently configured, individual jobs can run for up to one month of wall clock time. These time limits can be adjusted to accommodate researchers’ needs. Available applications include a variety of computational chemistry packages and compilers for researchers who prefer to write their own code. The list of available applications offered and supported by the group’s scientists (Shubin Liu, Chi-Duen Poon, and Mark Reed) will be expanded in the future as customer feedback is received.
Unlike traditional Linux clusters, the Altix has only one operating system instance running, thereby freeing the majority of processors to complete computations with minimal overhead. “The SGI Altix provided an immediate increase to our customers in program run times. Researchers have enjoyed getting back the results and data faster than ever before,” Loren commented. “Typical user applications are running four to six times faster than on the ITS SGI Origin 3800, a system that is being phased out.”
ITS Research Computing services are listed at http://its.unc.edu/reco. Access to the Altix can be requested from the subscription services button of the Onyen home page.–DBM
