University Business - May 2011 - (Page 34)

Networks Freshen Up classes involved letting students use six physical servers each, but that required tremendous resources to keep them cooled and stored. Engorn adds that they’d also become outdated quickly, which ran counter to the purpose of teaching students about using cutting-edge technology. By giving students virtual servers, and allowing them to share desktops with each other through virtual desktop technology, the school has been able to boost its educational offerings without revamping any network hardware or related technologies. “Other schools are doing virtual computer labs, or have virtual desktops, but I felt like we needed to go a step further,” says Engorn. “Networking in today’s day and age moves very fast, so we had to keep ahead of those changes. Using virtual servers allowed us to do exactly that.” Another benefit, he adds, is that virtualization allowed the school to pull resources off the network, which allows IT to better protect the network in general, and create more restrictive access. “Virtualization and cloud computing are huge,” says Bryan Peterson, associate director of technical services enterprise systems and software development at Utah Education Network (UEN), a consortium of public education partners, including the Utah System of Higher Education and its 10 universities and colleges. “In education, many of the IT folks have to stretch their dollars and be innovative, so they end up running their equipment longer than average. With strategies like virtualization and cloud computing, they get more utilization and longer life out of their networks.” Wireless Rolls Ahead Nearly every campus boasts a wireless Network, and now, those technologies are being used to take pressure off older networks as well as increase mobility. Plymouth State University’s stephen campbell notes that a main strategy is to reduce telecom and wired networks, due to higher demand from students and faculty for stronger wireless access. the tactic reduces the need for more extensive upgrades to existing wired infrastructure. “the wireless network is starting to drive some people away from the wired network,” says Rochester Institute of Technology’s Greg Gardner. “that’s going to work for us for a while, but there will likely be a saturation point. you can only go so far when more and more use is being driven to wireless.” rit is currently determining bandwidth needs, and Gardner anticipates that upgrades in the future will focus quite strongly on the wireless network as opposed to the traditional, wired network. but benefits for that approach.” In RIT’s initial assessment, the technology team found that a large portion of students were forwarding their university e-mail to Gmail anyway, so the change for those individuals would be minor. Also, Gmail is able to provide very large e-mail storage mailboxes, whereas RIT’s e-mail was more limited, in order to minimize a Getting Creative In making sure that networks can meet demand, colleges and uni- storage crunch on the network. “If we’d tried to give students the amount of e-mail storage they versities are looking at all aspects of their technologies and trying to find innovative ways to stay ahead without doing too much wanted, it would have been rather expensive,” says Gardner. Alpurchasing. At Plymouth State, for example, there’s a strong focus though the IT department had to give up some control of e-mail on developing their own applications, and employing Software-as- management, going with Gmail turned out to meet student need a-Service. This one-two punch means that IT can grow their own more efficiently—and it took bandwidth pressure off the network. Another creative strategy is segregating the network, notes Wilsoftware with internal network specifications in mind, and then use hosted applications for an additional boost. “Sometimes, it’s just liam Morse, chief technology officer at the University of Puget more cost effective to build an application ourselves,” says Camp- Sound (Wash.). Faculty and staff use one network, students use another. The tactic ensures that the former group can get fast acbell. “We look at all the possibilities.” The main IT project involves building web portals, including a cess without trying to get through the type of bottlenecks sometimes community portal that will let local stores and restaurants contrib- seen with student bandwidth use. “Students will always use up as much bandwidth as you provide. ute information about events, sales, and promotions. Another portal gives students the ability to share bills with their parents, or broad- They just soak it up, no matter how much you give them,” says Morse. “By letting the academic traffic go through first, we make cast facts about themselves to other students. In addition to in-house application development, another cre- sure access isn’t bogged down with traffic that’s more recreational.” No matter what the strategy, from e-mail ative strategy is to shift e-mail management. hosting to cloud computing to virtual deskAt RIT, the technology team did a convertops, colleges and universities are finding ways sion project in 2009 to transfer all students Cast Iron Systems, www.castiron.com to meet network demands without busting to Gmail accounts served through Google, DataCore Software Corporation, their budgets with continual upgrades. rather than give them university-based e-mail www.datacore.com accounts. Gardner says, “We did an analysis Google, www.google.com Elizabeth Millard is a Minneapolis-based writer of what it would mean to switch from inter- VMware, www.vmware.com who specializes in covering technology. nal to external accounts, and we saw nothing Resources 34 | May 2011 universitybusiness.com http://www.castiron.com http://www.datacore.com http://www.google.com http://www.vmware.com http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - May 2011

University Business - May 2011
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Money Matters
Human Resources
Community Colleges
Networks Freshen Up
Collaboration Station
Someone to Watch Over You
What's New
End Note

University Business - May 2011