ITforUM Spring 2007: The Information Technology Newsletter for the University of Maryland

Spring 2007

ARTICLES

OIT Opens Research Data Center
The Research Data Center is a co-location facility dedicated to research computing for non-OIT administered systems. The facility offers an improved infrastructure for systems that would typically have to reside in offices or building spaces not designed for that purpose. Full article

New Terrapin Technology Store
The Office of Information Technology has established the new Terrapin Technology Store as a service to University of Maryland students, faculty, and staff, in order to offer high-tech equipment to the university community at favorable prices. Full article

New Measures to Decrease Spam for University E-mail Accounts
On March 3, 2007, OIT implemented new e-mail forwarding hosts in the Mail@umd environment to provide some relief from the spam that plagues us all. These hosts are not only faster, but are running the Mirapoint MailHurdle software for increased spam protection. Full article

More Secure Wireless Access Now Available
OIT is taking new steps to improve the security of the wireless network. The university community can now use the “umd-secure” wireless network to ensure that wireless communications are encrypted and are sent only to legitimate university wireless access points. Full article

T!Ps 4 Cre8ing A NU PAssW0RD
A password that complies with the new password rules doesn’t have to be as complicated as it may seem. Full article

Forwarding Your E-mail Could Present Problems
In response to the ever-growing spam problem, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are aggressively working to reduce the number of unwanted messages delivered to their customers’ mailboxes. Legitimate messages forwarded from the university can and do get blocked on occasion because they are sometimes erroneously labeled as spam. Full article

Coming Soon: Failed Password Lockout
This past fall, the Office of Information Technology instituted requirements for stronger passwords and a 180 day password expiration policy in order to comply with state and University System of Maryland (USM) regulations. OIT is now preparing for the implementation of the last remaining password-related mandate, the temporary lockout of Directory IDs that are subject to repeated failed password attempts. Full article

D. Peter O'Neil Named Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads
The Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX) – a GigaPoP organization founded by Georgetown University, George Washington University, the University of Maryland, and Virginia Tech – recently announced the appointment of D. Peter O’Neil as Executive Director, effective January 16, 2007. Full article

Providing a Suitable and Easy Way to Recycle Used Electronics
Did you know that when computers and other electronic equipment are disposed of improperly, they release ozone-depleting gases into the environment? Or that computer and television displays contain between four and eight pounds of lead that can pollute our drinking water? You can help to ensure that you make environmentally-friendly decisions by disposing of your used or unwanted electronic equipment properly. Full article

OIT Acquires Faculty Resources Available at EDUCAUSE
As a service for faculty members, OIT recently became a member in the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), formerly NLII. The ELI focuses on advancing learning through IT innovation, serving as a source of dependable, practical information and a lively professional community for higher education. Full article

Transitioning to Maryland's ELMS Environment
Maryland’s enterprise learning management system (ELMS) was deployed during the fall 2006 semester. The Academic Support staff in OIT is currently migrating WebCT course content to the ELMS environment (powered by Blackboard). Full article

High-Powered Computing Resources Enhance University Research
We’ve all heard the old adage that two heads are better than one for solving a problem. The university’s high-performance and grid computing resources take that idea and multiply it to provide super-powered processing abilities. Full article

Move Your WAM, Glue, and DEANS E-mail to Mail@umd and Get Account Access on the Web
If you use WAM, Glue, or DEANS for e-mail, you can now migrate your e-mail into a new or existing Mail@umd e-mail account. Doing this will benefit you in several ways. Full article

VoIP Coming to Campus
Imagine being able to receive calls to your university phone number anywhere on campus or to see whether your colleague is available to answer your call, even before you dial. Envision sending and receiving video phone calls and checking your voice mail, e-mail, IM, and video calls from one interface. Sound like a pipe dream? Full article

OIT Now Offers Enhanced Podcasts
OIT now offers its podcasts in a new enhanced format in addition to its regular audio format. Full article

Reminder: Dial-up Service to End in 2007
The campus modem pool was originally created to enable faculty, staff, and students to have remote access to the campus network at a time when commercial dialup options were limited or unavailable. Eventually this remote access service evolved to provide Internet access. Full article

Message from Jeff Huskamp, Vice President and CIO

Gaining Economies of Scale

In the face of continuing budget pressure to do more with less, it is important to maximize the benefit from all resource investments. An important role for the campus central information technology organization is to identify campus needs and to build programs that meet those needs in the most cost effective way. By consolidating demand and seeking competitive pricing, we can be very efficient in procuring a wide range of goods and services.

There are several existing opportunities where economies of scale have already been achieved across campus, including the following:

High-Performance Computing (HPC) Cluster – Departments can add to the campus HPC cluster, avoid having to manage their own separate cluster, and receive their share of the computing cycles. By participating in the campus cluster, researchers have the possibility of trading cycles to have the use of a larger number of nodes than they contributed at certain times. (www.oit.umd.edu/HPCC)
Hosting Equipment – Data center quality space is available for rack mounted research systems in the newly available Research Data Center (RDC). This space conforms to state audit requirements, is monitored 24x7, and will be continuously upgraded over time with networking and environmental enhancements. (www.oit.umd.edu/units/ops/rdc)
Academic Computers for Terps (ACT) – Personal purchasers of Dell and Apple computers can utilize this program to obtain prices that are below educational discounts due to ACT leveraging the consolidated purchasing power of the university community. (www.act.umd.edu)

There are also other areas where we plan to pursue opportunities to achieve economies of scale:

E-mail – In 2008, we aim to host an enterprise productivity e-mail suite of services that will include calendaring, e-mail, task organization, and voice mail-to-e-mail services. When this system becomes available, faculty and staff will be able to choose either the existing Mirapoint enterprise e-mail system or this new productivity e-mail system. Campus departments hosting their own e-mail systems can transfer their e-mail accounts to one of these enterprise systems and save the people, software license, and hardware costs of running their own systems.
Storage – Storage is a significant opportunity to gain economies of scale across campus. The many different storage systems across campus could be consolidated to achieve a lower cost per terabyte than any one department can obtain on its own. In addition, disaster recovery services (such as off-site tape rotations or multiple copy/location backup) could be more easily instituted. OIT is now seeking departments or researchers who want to participate in this opportunity. If you are interested, please contact Fran LoPresti (flopresti@umd.edu).

In addition to these opportunities, if you have a suggestion for some other service that could benefit from campus economies of scale, please contact me at jhuskamp@umd.edu. We are always looking for new and innovative ways to better serve the campus community.

ITforUM is the Information Technology Newsletter of the University of Maryland, published by the Office of Information Technology.
Letters to the editor and article suggestions are welcome. Please send correspondence to ITforUM@umd.edu.
Staff Credits | Archive. © 2007 University of Maryland.