You Can Get What You Want On Demand

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You Can Get What You WantOn Demand

• Leslie Hitch, Ed.D. Director Academic Technology
• Northeastern University

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Agenda

• About Northeastern University and Information
  Services Division
• Business Challenge and Drivers
• Information System and Technology Strategy
• Where We Have Been and Where We are Going
• Lessons Learned

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Northeastern University

• Private university founded 1898 in Boston, MA
• National interdisciplinary research university
  that is student-centered, practice-oriented and
  urban
• 25,000 applications nationally for 2,800 freshman
  seats
• Major research initiatives Technology
  development, economic growth, social progress,
  and health care.
• 18,000 FT and 5,500 PT students across 7 colleges
  and Law School
• 1,000 faculty, 3,000 support staff. Over 160,000
  registered alumni
• Top co-op school per US News World Report
• Focused on experiential learning including
  co-op, student research, service learning, and
  global learning
• Site of the first World Series in 1903
  (Pittsburgh Pirates vs. Boston Red Sox)

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Northeastern University Information Services

• 24M annual budget spanning academic/administrativ
  e technology
• 70 of Northeasterns IT expenditures
• 150 FT, 200 PT staff
• 250,000 customers (including alumni)
• 6 campuses
• 5000 IS-managed desktops/notebooks
• 800 application objects
• Winner of 2005 Awards for Northeastern on Demand
• CIO 100
• Computerworld Enterprise Computing Management
• Campus Technology

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The Demands

• Highly mobile customers (co-op, research,
  scholarship)
• Inconsistent workstation availability/configuratio
  n/ownership
• Dynamic (and conflicting) academic software
  requirements
• Thousands of dynamically reconfiguring teams
• Inter-university collaboration growing
• Low customer tolerance for IT complexity,
  training, etc
• Millennial students and young faculty

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Strategic Focus

• Manage to reality. Dont try to manage reality.

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The Foundation myNEU

• Northeasterns Enterprise Portal September 2002
• Information delivery
• University-wide and personal
• Transaction capability
• Person specific and secure
• Personalized delivery
• Per role, discipline, status, etc
• Single Sign On environment for all major IT
  services
• Increasingly mature
• 50,000 customers
• 15,000 unique logons per day

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The Next Step Ubiquitous Personal Storage

• Inadequate networked storage
• Departmental/group shares
• Mapped networked drive on managed computers
• Faculty/staff only, by default
• Lack of control by users
• Accessible only on campus
• Difficult to access from self-administered
  computers
• Clearly need actual ubiquitous access!

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Requirements

• Of the technology
• Web-based
• Open standards
• Scalability
• Acceptance
• Customization
• Of the partner
• Commitment to technology
• Responsiveness

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myFiles Fostering collaboration

• Research
• Cross-departmental
• Inter-University
• Learning
• Group projects
• Teacher student interaction
• Blackboard - File Bridge
• Administrative
• Team work

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myFiles User Acceptance

• Virtual C drive for world-wide, secure access
  to data
• Access from any Internet-connected device via
  browser
• Or from home or work computer
• Works with MS Windows, MacOS, Linux . . .
• Protected via full backups and versions, locks,
  permissions
• Customer self-service
• Share data with other myFiles users via myNEU
  user/group permissions
• Share data with external users using secure
  tickets (password-protected, time-limited
  links)
• myFiles space can double as users web site
• Easily accessible
• Over 12000 active users consuming close to 1TB of
  disk

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myFiles IT Benefits

• Lowered support calls
• Excellent online tutorials/FAQs
• Familiar interfaces
• Customer self-enablement
• Scalability and reliability
• Central administration
• Access via LDAP roles
• Open standards

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Next Step Software availability via secure
downloads

• The old process
• User contacts IS Call Center requests software
  for home/mobile use
• Remedy Ticket forwarded to Software Licensing
• License request logged (media copy created)
  user contacted
• User picks up media and installs software
  Returns media (?)
• The new process
• User logs in to myNEU, sees Software Downloads
  link if role allows.
• Downloads software from myFiles group space,
  installs it.
• Audit trail created Software Licensing notified
• Admitted students and antivirus software

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On Demand Mobile Access myApps

• Dynamic desktop application delivery
• Per role, discipline, course enrollment, etc
• Non-destructive/disruptive delivery through
  Softricity
• Image runs within a Virtual Machine environment
• Streamed at initial request and cached for
  subsequent use
• Workstation re-imaging has minimal impact
• Can access from just about any place and any time
  over any connection
• Addresses increasing mobility demands of users
• myFiles offers the place where users
  information is stored

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myApps Implementation (ongoing)

• Personalized access to required applications
• The on-campus experience
• Requires desktop client. Software runs on local
  computer
• Managed computer, or ability to access campus
  domain.
• Access per role, discipline, course enrollment,
  etc.
• User data can be stored on local drive or myFiles
• The anytime, anywhere experience
• Remote desktop via myNEU
• Access per role, discipline, course enrollment,
  etc.
• User data stored on myFiles
• myFiles convenient, understandable, easy to
  connect technologically

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Other Challenges, and Lessons Learned

• Soft rollout
• Try it before you market it
• Centralized identity management/repository
• Rules-based identity information to other
  applications
• Enterprise data integration
• Institutional CRM
• Customer service
• Support 24x7x365 availability
• Infrastructure
• Reliable Disk Space
• HA Server Environment
• System Management Tools
• Increasing need for more and more storage - large
  applications, graphics, GIS
• Software availability
• Licensing for the virtualized experience
• Coordinating software installation
• Multiple software versions
• Look for standards
• Provides flexibility and agility to manage to
  reality

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Questions?

• Thank -you
• Leslie Hitch
  l.hitch_at_neu.edu
• Assemble system environment
• http//www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0310.pdf
  
• Enable Northeastern on-demand
• http//connect.educause.edu/library/abstract/Educa
  tionalTechnolog/39991
• http//www.infoservices.neu.edu/ondemand/