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Michael O. Ball, Samer Faraj, Chris Hageman, Judy Olian, Venky Shankar,
Robert H. Smith School of Business
Charles Lowry, Dean
University Libraries and College of Library and Information Services
Don Riley, Chief Information Officer
Office of Information Technology and Robert H. Smith School of Business
As a broad cross-section of the University of Maryland community
increasingly engages in Internet-based research projects and Web-enhanced
course offerings, it becomes clear that there is a need for a common set
of fundamental computing capabilities: security, authentication and
authorization services, the ability to handle a variety of
sometimes-intense transaction streams, large-scale data management,
real-time data analysis, group interactions and decision support.
Cross-campus and multi-institutional research areas that require these
capabilities include electronic commerce; data analysis, data mining and
data warehousing; and virtual libraries and multimedia learning
environments. The objective of this proposal is to develop a robust
environment on which to base these and similar applications. Such an
environment should provide efficiencies related to the provision of common
services and encourage teaching and research synergies related to the
common needs.
This proposal requests assistance from IBM in launching a University of
Maryland initiative in electronic commerce that has distinguishing
components:
- It would help "jump-start" the University in creating a secure
electronic commerce infrastructure that would provide a model for higher
education on creating a "commercial grade" infrastructure and environment
to support web-based, secure electronic commerce: online registration,
access to grades and other records, payments, protection of intellectual
property, access control, work flow, etc.
- It would provide a commercial grade "living lab" for support of teaching
and research, proof of concept; provide a showcase for EC solutions in
support of higher education.
- It would provide a foundation for an important three-way partnership
between the Office of Information Technology, IBM and other potential
private sector partners, and other University of Maryland entities,
especially academic units in innovative teaching, research and outreach
programs.
- It would provide a significant showcase for the partnership outcomes,
for both the University and for IBM just inside the Washington D.C.
beltway.
- It would also provide a commercial grade, open systems platform to
support existing and planned research and development partnerships with
state and federal agencies, the private sector, and non-US entities.
Current activities underway that serve as examples include NIST, NSA,
USDA, NASA, FAA, Marriott, the United Nations Trade Efficiency Initiative
(Global Trade Point Network), World Bank, and discussions with Industry
Canada about a US-Canada pilot project in electronic commerce. The State
of Maryland is providing some initial startup funding for the UN project,
and is considering launching a state initiative on Information Assurance
and Security.
- The University is also participating in the Internet2 project, and is
currently working with Virginia Tech, George Washington, and Georgetown
University to establish the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads for the
Maryland-D.C.-Virginia area, and is talking with NSF and the federal Joint
Engineering Team regarding establishing and operating the NGIX-East
(interchange point on the East coast for the federal labs, vBNS, and
Abilene networks).
This specific proposal is for support of an initial OIT-School of
Business-Library-IBM partnership as the starting point. We believe that
the IBM SP2 system is ideally suited for this purpose and propose to
obtain an SP2 "starter kit" under the IBM SUR Program (SP2 frame with
switch, several "silver" 2-way processor nodes, data storage, software,
etc.) that would support:
- Campus-wide electronic commerce infrastructure: X.500 directory
services, authentication/authorization, digital signatures, public key
infrastructure (PKI);
- School of Business needs for robust server environment for teaching and
research (several specific projects identified below); and
- Research and development by the University Libraries of digital library
services (in partnership with Indiana U and Berkeley, NSF proposal) but
with an outcome focused on transition to robust production services.
Among the requirements are streaming video/audio, plus
authentication/authorization and encryption to protect intellectual
property and support licensing arrangements.
- Evolving regional, national and international projects and initiatives.
The University has committed to four specific projects that would
immediately develop capabilities using the proposed system and
infrastructure. Other projects that would make use of its capabilities
are planned within a fairly short time horizon. The four projects are:
- Smith School of Business: On-Line Collection and Analysis of Consumer
Preference and Behavior Information
- Smith School of Business: Support for Electronic Commerce Course
Offerings
- Smith School of Business: WWW Based Performance Monitoring
- University Libraries: Web-Based Access to Library Resources
The SP2 system would be maintained by the Office of Information Technology
(OIT) and would be made available to appropriate projects from across
campus. The initial configuration can be viewed as a starting point that
would provide a foundation for growth and enhancement over time as new
applications were brought on board. The use of SP2 in this setting will
provide a showcase for IBM capabilities and will support the development
of research on SP2 application development and potential new SP2 features.
The environment and applications we envision will leverage and showcase
the robustness and power of the SP2 platform: High-performance, Security,
Manageability, Reliability and Availability, and Scalability.
The infrastructure will provide a core set of services, such as Lotus
Domino, DB2 and Oracle, to academic departments and research centers. For
example, while one group may need web hosting for a high-traffic site
provided by Lotus Domino, another may need DB2 to provide data mining and
decision support capabilities. We note that the Robert H. Smith School of
Business, which will provide two of the initial applications, has adopted
Lotus Notes as its email, courseware and groupware environment. Access to
server resources, in most cases, can be provided via already familiar
means that are in widespread use across campus such as Novell NDS or
Microsoft NT Domains.
Clients will be able to interface at the application level. For example, a
research center that wishes to design an Oracle database would only need
to know database design and how to use the client tools, such as Designer
2000, rather than needing to maintain the Oracle server. This will allow
researchers to concentrate on content rather than infrastructure.
Below we list the four initial projects to be brought up using the SP2
system. The first two relate to the broad set of efforts within the area
of electronic commerce in the Smith School of Business. The third project
supports NEXTOR, which is a center jointly housed in the Smith School and
the Clark School of Engineering. The fourth project involves the College
of Library and Information Services. Within approximately a one-year
time frame, other applications would be developed on the SP2. Of
particular note regarding future developments within the Smith School, are
a project by the Marketing Department on electronic auctions and plans by
the Finance Department to develop a virtual trading environment.
1. On-Line Collection and Analysis of Consumer Preference and Behavior
Information
Organizations involved in e-commerce need a better understanding of their
online customers to be able to formulate sound business strategies, and in
particular, good marketing strategies. Toward this end, they are
interested in analyzing customer preferences and behavior on the Internet.
Unlike the offline medium, the online medium offers an excellent
opportunity to query prospects and customers and to understand their
preferences, needs, and responses to new products and marketing
activities, on a real time basis. The Smith School of Business plans to
launch and maintain a e-commerce research web site that is capable of
collecting and analyzing data online from the visitors to the web sites of
member organizations. Member organizations will have a link in their web
site to this e-commerce research web site. They will direct their
visitors to participate in one of many ongoing research projects conducted
by the Smith School of Business faculty. To motivate visitors to
participate, member organizations will provide incentives (e.g., frequent
stay bonus points from Marriott). Member companies will also provide some
funding for the research and will receive managerially relevant reports on
cutting-edge e-commerce research. The research will provide ideas on
future enabling technologies for advancing e-commerce that could
potentially benefit IBM. Already, companies such as Marriott
International and Thompson Publishers have indicated their desire to be
member organizations of the e-commerce center. We hope to be the
pioneering school in doing this type of research.
2. Support for Electronic Commerce Course Offerings
In the Fall of 1998, the Smith School launched a high visibility
electronic commerce concentration (as well as one in telecommunications
and software engineering). Most of the courses constituting the
concentration require the use of a sophisticated electronic commerce
computing infrastructure. We propose to build these capabilities on top
of the proposed SP2 system. The planned environment would allow students
to become familiar with a complete electronic commerce solution including
technologies such as Secure Electronic Transaction (SET), Electronic Data
Interchange (EDI), and public key infrastructure (PKI) which they would
not get if the infrastructure was not in place. Further, the students
would acquire the skills that would allow them to assess the complex
components that underlie the emerging electronic commerce world. They
would gain an understanding of important issues such as electronic
commerce solution planning, functional design, prototype/solution
development, infrastructure assessment, net security, authentication, and
the economics of electronic commerce. At the Smith School, we expect a
significant percentage of both graduate and undergraduate students to be
interested in electronic commerce courses and concentrations. Thus, a
solid infrastructure is a necessity in order to support the teaching
requirements. The Smith School has already committed hardware, software
and personnel resources to this effort.
3. WWW Based Performance Monitoring
NEXTOR, the National Center of Excellence in Aviation Operations Research,
is a consortium of four universities, the University of Maryland, MIT, the
University of California, Berkeley and VPI. NEXTOR is pursuing several
research projects at the University of Maryland in conjunction with the
joint airline/FAA Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) Project. In
particular, NEXTOR recently completed a benefits analysis of CDM and is
embarking on an effort to put in place mechanisms for collecting data
related to CDM and for computing associated performance metrics. To
implement CDM-based ground delay programs, the airlines and the FAA
exchange information via an intra-net, the AOCnet (Airline Operations
Centers network). For the performance monitoring architecture envisioned,
data related to ground delay programs would be collected in real-time via
the AOCnet. This data would be used to continuously update the value of
performance metrics. The values of the metrics would be made available to
appropriate parties via the WWW. The appropriate dissemination of this
performance information would require the use of advanced security
features. In particular, certain information would be made available to
the general public, while some would only be available to members of the
CDM working-group and finally, certain airline-specific performance
information would only be available to the appropriate airline. The
required computing environment should have a large data store, including
archiving capabilities, be capable of handling intense real-time
traffic/transaction streams and support advanced security, authorization
and authentication features. Funding from the FAA and NEXTOR industry
partners is already committed to support this effort. In addition, NEXTOR
industry partner, Metron, has committed to provide development support.
4. Web-Based Access to Library Resources
The University of Maryland Libraries provides access through its growing
IT facilities to a broad array of electronic information. Databases range
from the bibliographic and full text to numeric and graphical. The
hundreds of databases, which the University Libraries mediate on behalf of
the campus, are acquired by licensing and subscription arrangement, by
local development and, at times, free through special agreements. It is
the plan of the Libraries to present these resources through its
"one-stop-shopping" Website facility and to develop a consistent
interface. However, one of the most serious obstacles is the lack of
campus wide robust cross-domain authentication and authorization services.
Such services are particularly important to planned library activities.
For example, the Libraries will be providing access to licensed electronic
information to non-university customers. This will require Internet
tracking and billing capabilities as well as the authentication,
authorization, and encryption services proposed. Without outside support
for these capabilities, the Libraries Information Technology Division
would have to build such services within the Libraries IT environment.
Ideally, the Libraries would use a central service, which would free its
limited resources to concentrate on the library-specific issues, including
how to best use such services. Thus, the planned SP2 platform with the
associated OIT support should enable the fast development of innovative
library access services.
In addition, the University Libraries have embarked on the creation of a
local "virtual library" environment using in particular digital and
electronic resources unique to Special Collections held in three
departments of the Libraries. There are two dimensions to this workÑboth
research and development that will lead to production systems supporting
basic services. Among these projects are the following:
* Development and implementation of digital access to thousands of hours
of recorded music, performance video and specialized disciplinary material
such as dance notation using the IBM DL Software and Video Charger as the
core technology. This work has been closely coordinated with the
University of Indiana, the lead institution in a joint NSF DLI-2 proposal
along with Maryland and UC Berkeley. Whether or not, the NSF proposal is
funded, the University of Maryland Libraries will proceed with the
implementation of a multi-media environment to support the Performing Arts
Library which will open as part of the new Maryland Center for the
Performing Arts.
* The Library of American Broadcasting is working closely with Professor
Douglas Oard to build a testbed of at least 1000 hours of digitized voice
recording from the analog (magnetic) files of our collections. This
testbed will be used by Professor Oard to advance the IBM voice
recognition technologies. The Libraries will receive benefit by creating
preservation standard analog copies and digital versions for use. In
addition, the voice recognition technologies will allow the Libraries to
begin creating advanced retrieval and transcription capabilities to
support leading edge access to historical broadcast collections. The SUR
grants to the University of Maryland have enabled this project
significantly. The Libraries continue to make investments in the human
resources of the project, adding one FTE staff and a graduate assistant
this year.
* Based on this work, to support the basic services of the Libraries
Non-Print Media department, we will also investigate the implementation of
streaming video and audio campus wide using IBM DL Software and the "Video
Charger" as well as other currently available technology. The Non-Print
Media Department has tens of thousands of hours of locally and
commercially created video and audio recordings. It also works closely
with the Library of American Broadcasting on joint multi-media projects.
When this work is released to production, it will support the real-time
conversion of audio and video materials for classroom and research uses
and their distribution across the campus network. There will be an added
benefit of preservation quality analog and digital records from this
conversion. IBM has been a partner in developing the UniversityÕs campus
network and ATM applications necessary to create the "bandwidth" needed
for multi-media use in the classroom and dorm room.
Benefits to IBM
Our intent is to make the SP2 and the associated projects a showcase for
advanced electronic commerce applications and research. As such we feel
the benefits to IBM will be substantial. First of all, the capabilities
of this IBM technology will be prominently displayed. Moreover, the
usefulness the SP2 will be demonstrated relative to a broad range of
applications. From our own perspective, we are quite excited about the
research that can be carried out within this setting. The results of this
research should lead to innovative approaches to using the SP2 technology
and also, should provide the basis for new SP2 features and services. We
think it is particularly significant that a diverse set of applications is
planned. Devising common solutions for these applications has the
potential for generating particularly innovative concepts. This proposal
has the added advantage of being able to leverage key public and private
sector partners and the unique proximity of the College Park Campus to
Washington, D.C., and federal laboratories.
Key contacts within IBM would include Stu Feldman, Director of the IBM
Institute for Advanced Commerce, Mark Greene, VP of Internet Payment and
Certification, IBM Internet Division, and Sean Rush, General Manager,
Higher Education. Stu Feldman will be visiting the College Park Campus on
October 7 to meet with the project participants and discuss areas of
mutual interest. Venkatesh Shankar contacts at IBM are Anant Jingran and
Sunil Noronha, IBM Watson Center. Support for the Performing Arts
Library joint-NSF proposal comes from Michael L. James, Manager of
Internet Strategy, Internet Division. In addition, the NSF proposal is
based on earlier work with IBM Digital Library and its Variations project
at the Indiana University School of Music
(http://www.software.ibm.com/is/dig-lib/variations/), which continues to
break new ground in higher education. Support for the work of the Library
of American Broadcasting and Professor Oard comes from Salim Roukos,
Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
System Configuration
SP2 Matrix
6 processors
12 Windows 98 workstations
High capacity data store
Data archiving capabilities
AIX operating system
DB2
Lotus Domino
E-business (including directory services, PKI ) software
Hardware and software to support the DL project.
Directory Services and
ECommerce
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