Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process June 2012 Marc Hoit, Ph.D. Vice Chancellor for Information Technology North Carolina State University
Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process June 2012 Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Information Technology: The Pathway to NC State s Future 5 OIT Strategic Principles 5 OIT Major Strategic Initiatives 6 Infrastructure 6 Automation and Foundational Services 7 Research 8 Campus Technology Services and Support 8 IT Challenges 9 OIT Strategic Investment Priorities 10 OIT Initiatives Supporting NC State s 2011-2020 Strategic Plan 11 Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process June 2012 Page 2
June 2012 Executive Summary Formed in November 2007, NC State s Office of Information Technology (OIT), the university s central IT organization, initiated a three-phase Strategic Planning Process to improve the use of information technology as a driver for change for the university. This planning process enters its final stage with an anticipated launch this summer of a comprehensive and collaborative NC State Strategic IT Plan. The Strategic Planning Process is another significant step in OIT s efforts and challenges to create strategic IT goals and underlying structures, tools and systems to help manage the university s complex IT environment today and in the future. OIT Strategic IT Principles In tandem with the Strategic Planning Process, OIT leadership established strategic IT principles that can serve as the foundation for developing and executing a progressive technology strategy for the university: Provide better IT support, services, systems and resources for the campus community to achieve the mission of the university. Provide more flexible tools, including database systems and software applications, to support the university financial and business processes. Balance central versus distributed IT efforts in the creation, support and evolution of all campus IT services. Balance the Build, Buy or Outsource decision for the selection of major IT products, systems and applications. Provide a safe, secure and operational IT foundational infrastructure for current and future technological systems and services. Develop industry partnerships to position the university as a research connection for industry as well as IT development and testing. OIT Major Strategic Initiatives Employing its strategic IT principles, OIT continues to modernize its network and communication infrastructure as well as its major systems and applications. From the recent data center cooling and equipment enhancements to the 10 Gb/s campus backbone to the campus Student Information System upgrade this fall, etc., IT aids research, drives innovation, enhances the classroom experience and improves employees work processes. These and other systems and services will serve as the groundwork for the new comprehensive IT Strategic Plan. IT Challenges OIT faces two major challenges that impede current and future IT progress on campus: the aging of the university s primary data center facilities, which house mission-critical systems, applications and data, and a shortage of experienced and knowledgeable IT personnel. New Data Center - Growing demands for increased operational efficiency, energy conservation, data security, and fiscal prudence make the need for a new data center at NC State urgent. The university s central data facilities are at capacity in terms of cooling, power and space, and incremental improvements made in both facilities are not sufficient to sustain existing and anticipated computing resource needs for the campus. Current estimates for a new data center range between $10 and $13 million. Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process June 2012 Page 3
Personnel OIT needs at least eight additional personnel in specific functional areas to provide expertise, coding, and business analysis in order to convert business needs into application environments. Anticipated funding for each position will be in the range of $125,000 per person with a total needed of $1,000,000 annually. The positions would be distributed as follows: One business analyst ($125,000), one senior developer ($125,000) and one operations and systems specialist ($125,000) for the expansion of identity management. One business analyst ($125,000) for the expansion of imaging. Three developers ($125,000 each for a total of $375,000) and one operations and systems specialist ($125,000) for the expansion of data marts. Notwithstanding these IT challenges, OIT strives to continue its mission to provide nimble, effective, efficient and collaborative IT services, solutions and strategies in a timely and helpful manner. OIT aims to support NC State s academic and business functions, its mission as NC s flagship university for science and technology, and its vision to emerge as a preeminent technological research university. Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process June 2012 Page 4
Information Technology: The Pathway to NC State s Future This summer, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) and members of the newly developed IT Governance Structure will launch the final stage of a three-phase Strategic Planning Process to provide a framework for the university s IT environment. This will be a concerted effort to develop a comprehensive campus IT Strategic Plan to support the mission, vision and goals of the university. OIT s Strategic Planning Process began with the merger of the two former central administrative and academic IT units in November 2007 and the appointment of Dr. Marc I. Hoit as the university s first Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer (CIO) in September 2008. Since then, OIT has strived to incorporate some fundamental shifts in its internal operations to improve the use of information technology as a driver for change. Some of these shifts have developed into strategic principles with underlying building blocks - IT structures, tools and systems - that will serve as a foundation for the new IT Strategic Plan. OIT Strategic Principles Provide better IT support for the campus community to achieve the mission of the university OIT is committed to providing IT systems and resources to help all NC State students, faculty, and staff members to study, work, and participate in today s interconnected global community. In partnership with campus stakeholders, OIT designs and delivers services, systems and resources to advance both the academic mission and the efficient administrative functioning of the university. Provide more flexible tools to support the university OIT supports a large number of university financial, business, research and teaching processes. These processes depend upon major database systems and software applications, which OIT deploys and manages. OIT is constantly developing new systems and modernizing others as advances in information technologies make new efficiencies and capabilities possible. Balance central versus distributed IT efforts OIT provides central IT services that support and impact users across the entire campus. Colleges and departmental services, however, provide more custom and localized services whose scope is often limited to a particular organization. While both provide invaluable IT services, the key is to develop partnerships between central and distributed services to share in the creation, support and evolution of all IT services. The development of the IT Governance structure as well as the development of a new campus IT Strategic Plan will help IT personnel work together to create such a balance. Balance the Build, Buy or Outsource decision OIT has established a practice that requires IT task committees to develop multi-option solutions along with pros and cons for the selection of a major IT product, system or application. Whether OIT builds or buys them, some services are critical to the university s mission and future, and OIT will need to maintain the expertise and service functions internally. Other services, such as cloud services (Software as a Service), are more commoditized, and OIT can better support the university needs through outsourcing. An open-source solution is also a strong component of OIT s service portfolio, and OIT will utilize this solution where sufficient tools are available. Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process June 2012 Page 5
Providing safe, secure and operational IT foundational infrastructure OIT provides core campuswide resources that serve as the necessary foundation for current and future technology systems and services. Other services that meet campus needs are built upon this infrastructure. As the technology landscape gets more complex, OIT must work with the campus community to provide a secure IT environment and to comply with various regulations and standards. Develop industry partnerships OIT s goal is to position the university as a research connection for industry as well as an IT development and testing environment. These partnerships will include shared development, funding, security and privacy issues as well as an exchange of expertise and interaction with the student population. OIT Major Strategic Initiatives From the data center cooling and equipment enhancements to the 10 Gb/s campus backbone to the campus Student Information System upgrade, IT aids research, drives innovation, enhances the classroom experience and improves employees work processes. Infrastructure Data Center Improvements - NC State s centrally provisioned IT services are dependent on the operation of its two primary data centers Data Center I (DC 1) in the 60-year-old Hillsborough Building and Data Center II (DC 2), built in 2005 in Admin Services III. Because of the aging infrastructure in DC 1 and lack of cooling resiliency in DC 2, OIT is nearing a decision point on how to handle campuswide IT growth and consolidation needs. OIT also continues to evaluate campus services that can be more efficiently provided by off-site ( cloud-based ) hosting providers. The data centers, which house mission-critical systems, applications and data, are at capacity in terms of cooling, power and space. To extend the life of the centers, OIT made a number of incremental improvements within the 2011-12 fiscal year. In Data Center I, OIT completed a new cold-aisle / hot aisle configuration to enhance cooling efficiency and began a second phase of the same process. When completed, this process will effectively utilize all available power and cooling. In Data Center 2, 19 cooling doors were installed to facilitate higher density rack configurations. This updated cooling strategy allows for the anticipated growth in the high-density computing provided by the Virtual Computing Lab and High Performance Computing. These incremental improvements facilitate extracting additional operating value from previous investments but are not sufficient to sustain existing and anticipated computing resource needs for the campus. Campus Network Infrastructure - OIT has recently upgraded the campus network backbone including data centers to support up to 40Gb/s of network traffic. The architecture chosen maximizes flexibility so that OIT can maintain a cost-efficient yet effective network by providing a right-sized network connection to the end-user ranging from 100Mb/s sufficient for most general use up to 10Gb/s for specific bandwidth-intensive needs. This summer, OIT is also upgrading the campus wireless infrastructure to the latest 802.11n standard, allowing the potential for up to 300Mb/s connections, compared to only 54Mb/s today. This is particularly important as OIT has seen the number of wireless devices continue to climb. Beginning this spring, there are routinely more wireless than wired devices connecting to the campus network. Altogether, the campus network now supports connectivity for more than 120,000 devices, which is almost three times the number of devices connected only a few years ago. Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process June 2012 Page 6
Security Framework - To comply with the recommendation from the University of North Carolina General Administration (UNC-GA), NC State and other UNC system colleges and universities are developing a comprehensive security framework based on ISO 27002 information systems standards. On behalf of the university, OIT is conducting a gap analysis to determine the additional documentation necessary to comply with the ISO 27002 sections: asset management, human resources security, physical and environmental security, communications and operations management, asset control, information security incident management, and business continuity management. The gap analysis is due to UNC-GA by July 1. Upon completion, the security framework will provide the means to secure university assets and information as well as provide consistent guidelines for internal and state auditors to follow. Automation and Foundational Services Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems - In October 2012, OIT will split the combined Student and the Human Resources Systems into two individual systems, in conjunction with the upgrades to version 9, in order to maintain vendor support. The Student Information System (SIS) 9.0 upgrade will feature an enrollment wizard and an advisor dashboard. In addition, OIT will partner with other campus IT units such as the College of Engineering Web Development Team to provide mobile support for SIS for functions such as class schedule and grade tracking. The Human Resources System 9.1 will offer a new workflow for the employee hiring process. Both the HR System and the Financial System will be enhanced to support the improved business processes being implemented within the new Business Operations Centers. All three ERP systems - SIS, HR and Financial - will provide increased workflow capabilities to facilitate electronic approvals and eliminate paper-based signatures, and will provide expanded integrated imaging capabilities to eliminate the need for multiple hard copies. Identity Management - OIT recently re-energized its efforts to collaborate with the colleges and units across campus to launch a comprehensive identity management program. OIT will replace the university s existing aging infrastructure with the Oracle Identity Management Suite. The entire project is anticipated to be completed by June 2013. Identity Management will benefit NC state by: o Identifying the attributes that are important in all university business processes and ensuring that everyone is using a common definition of those attributes. o Improving security and privacy by only sharing what is necessary about an individual and when it is necessary to share it. o Allowing efficient sharing of resources within university applications and systems as well as beyond the university at sites such as research.gov. o Streamlining the integration of new university processes. Streamlining File Storage - Currently, OIT provides a variety of file storage systems to campus consumers. While there is no single file system that will meet all needs, OIT is working with key campus stakeholders to identify critical needs and to reduce the overall number of file systems hosted locally. With the sharp decrease in costs, cloud storage services, such as Google Drive, have become increasingly attractive and easier to use on a variety of computing platforms. OIT is in the process of eliminating its Novell file storage and has invested in a new environment named NCSU Drive. AFS file space continues to be used, particularly for back-end storage. University Communications Partnership - OIT and University Communications are spearheading a multi-step effort to develop an effective, core internal communications system to enhance the distribution and impact of internal community communications. OIT will lead two of Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process June 2012 Page 7
Research these efforts: a formalized email process for major internal campus communications and a unified central campus calendaring system based on Google Calendar. University Communications will direct a review of The Bulletin, NC State s internal faculty and staff newsletter to determine how this staff communication channel can be maximally effective and will also develop a Communicator s Toolbox, a comprehensive listing of campus communication resources. HPC and VCL - OIT is reaching out to the campus to initiate and participate in faculty research and to increase its efforts to provide expertise, infrastructure management and other support for researchers. OIT has expanded the utilization of High Performance Computing (HPC) and the Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) to provide more support for faculty while developing leading-edge cyber infrastructure models for networking, visualization and analytics. Through April, the VCL has had more than 180,000 reservations this fiscal year, using more than 925,000 hours by nearly 16,000 unique users. Through March 2012, HPC service had delivered 9.5 million CPU hours for 124 projects and 536 unique users. NCB-Prepared - Through NC State s VCL, OIT continues to provide the cloud computing infrastructure for the North Carolina Bio-Preparedness Collaborative project, which provides a statewide research system to quickly detect and analyze biological threats to public health and safety. With NCB-Prepared funding, OIT has enhanced its hardware capabilities to handle increased data throughput as well as incorporated NCB-Prepared requirements in the VCL development work. CentMesh - NC State's Centennial Campus implemented one of the country's first large-scale, outdoor, experimental wireless networks using open source software. The Centennial Outdoor Wireless Mesh Network Testbed for Research and Education (CentMesh) began operating in February of 2012 and is made up of 14 wireless access points located strategically throughout campus. OIT re-designed much of the existing Centennial Campus outdoor wireless coverage and partnered with the Institute for Next Generation IT Systems, its constituent Open Systems Collaboration and Research Lab, and the Secure Open Systems Initiative in the installation and maintenance of the CentMesh network. Campus Technology Services and Support Business Intelligence Portal / Data Marts - OIT, working in partnership with SAS, is helping to develop projects that gather and mine data from many disparate university resources (e.g. Student Information Systems, Financials, Human Resources, Research, Advancement, etc.) to provide meaningful analysis and to help the campus make intelligent business decisions and improve academic success. Finance and Business has provided funding for two positions within OIT Enterprise Application Services (EAS) to begin the process of developing a Business Intelligence Portal. Web Hosting - At the start of the 2011-12 fiscal year, OIT began offering a new Web Hosting Service that provides campus units a more cost-effective option to host their Web presence and to increase their flexibility and speed of deploying dynamic, database-driven website applications. OIT will continue to offer Web services support. Classrooms - OIT is providing a centralized sustainable model for technology support of many of the university's general purpose classrooms and has developed an accessible interface for Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process June 2012 Page 8
technology equipment in those classrooms. ClassTech now supports more than 150 110 classrooms and many other non-110 learning and administrative spaces. Additionally, OIT and Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications (DELTA) are co-developing a lecture capture service for on-campus classes using the Mediasite Rich Media capture system. Mediasite recorders have been installed in approximately 45 classrooms and are now being used to capture course content for student review. OIT will develop and implement a strategy that allows these recorders to be used in classrooms without an operator. Google Apps @ NC State - To provide campus with a unified email and calendaring system, the university outsourced its email services to Google Inc., providing significant savings and new services to collaborate, communicate and educate. Last November, OIT completed the migration of employee email accounts to Google Apps @ NC State, bringing the entire campus community onto the new email and calendaring platform. In addition to these services, users received an array of collaborative tools, including Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Talk. They are currently able to opt in to Google Drive, a replacement for Google Docs, which will provide them with 5 GB of storage space and the ability to access their files wherever they are stored - on the Web, hard drive or mobile device. Help Desk & Managed Desktop - The NC State Help Desk recently transitioned to a new Call Center model with a new student-staffed Tier 1 component of the Help Desk. This new model provides improved availability of agents and reduce customers wait times. For the time period of July 2011 - March 2012, 91.65% of calls to the help desk had no waiting time. The number of students, faculty and staff using the OIT Walk-In Center (WIC) continues to grow. The WIC is seeing a 21% increase in the number of unique visitors per month from the previous year. OIT is also transitioning more than 3,000 employees from the current Novell-based environment to the new OIT Managed Desktop Environment, which uses the Windows 7 operating system. The new environment enhances OIT's ability to support client workstations at scale, while providing more file space to users. The project will be completed early 2013. IT Challenges As information communication technologies advance, OIT must continue to modernize its network and communication infrastructure and major database systems and applications. However, the university s aging central data facilities, which house mission-critical systems, applications and data; cyber security threats; and limited staff resources are real and viable threats to the reliability of the university s business functions. Data Centers - For many years, NC State has recognized that a new physical data center is vital to the continuing mission of the university and necessary for maintaining its role as the state s flagship university in science and technology. Consideration had been given to incorporating such a facility into a future engineering building; however, growing demands for increased operational efficiency, energy conservation, data security, and fiscal prudence make the need for a new data center urgent. As mentioned previously, the university s two primary data centers are at capacity in terms of cooling, power and space. Due to the lack of centrally-available data center capacity, many NC State colleges and departments do not have cost-effective and secure options for server and data storage. As a result, numerous server rooms have proliferated around campus. NC State needs a replacement data center and a physical facility strategy to address the growth and consolidation of all of its IT computing services. Cyber Security - One of the most serious IT security threats the university faces is a cyber attack against its campus network, applications and data. The threat from cyber-security incidents is Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process June 2012 Page 9
three-fold. First, compromised computers can make systems unreliable or unavailable for processing of normal work such as operational support of the university or development and testing of new capabilities. Secondly, staff time and the dollar cost to recover from the attack can delay or redirect strategic IT projects. Recovery costs from a breach can cost millions of dollars. Thirdly, reputational costs associated with breaches are an additional expense, and such breaches are very likely in a higher education context. According to privacyrights.org, educationrelated organizations accounted for 31% of all breaches logged from 2005 through 2008. More than 12.4 million students and their records were potentially compromised in 324 events. As cyber threats and attacks increase over the Internet, so does the need for proactive measures and sufficient financial resources and staff to implement appropriate controls for the protection of mission-critical systems, applications and data. OIT security staff must be adequately trained on how to detect, respond to, and prevent cyber security threats and attacks, and the campus community must be continuously educated on the dangers of cyber security threats, including how to recognize and guard against them. Personnel - The current and previous years budget reductions continue to impact IT resources both funding and personnel. OIT s portion of the mandated campus budget reductions this fiscal year resulted in the elimination of 22.25 FTE, which had a significant impact on its services it provides. A number of services Help Desk hours, consulting and Web services, classroom design support, and administrative support have been reduced; data centers have less staff coverage; security services have been impacted; upgrades, enhancements and new services have been delayed, and necessary equipment refreshes have been postponed. Additionally, as the IT job market appears to be improving, OIT is at an even greater disadvantage with regard to offering competitive salaries and benefits to retain and recruit adequate staff talent for its complex scope of services and to provide staff training on IT security, new technologies and existing systems. OIT Strategic Investment Priorities As NC State has transformed into one of the nation s top land-grant research institutions, technology has led the way. Investing in IT resources is one of the single most important decisions NC State can make. A state-of-the-art data facility as well as experienced and knowledgeable IT personnel will make it possible for the university to continue to develop innovative IT solutions. Technical staff to support key priorities At least eight additional personnel are needed in diverse functional areas to provide expertise, coding, and business analysis in order to convert business needs into application environments. The positions would be distributed as follows: One business analyst ($125,000), one senior developer ($125,000), and one operations and system specialist ($125,000) for the expansion of identity management. One business analyst ($125,000) for the expansion of imaging. Three developers ($125,000 each for a total of $375,000) and one operations and systems specialist ($125,000) for the expansion of data marts. Total Request: $1,000,000 New Computing Resource Center There are studies underway to develop architecture for a new campus data center to facilitate the migration of services out of the aging Data Center 1, to provide growth and consolidation of unit and college services, and to support the migration of appropriate services into developing cloudservice architectures. Associated Costs: ~$10-$13 million Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process June 2012 Page 10
OIT Initiatives Supporting NC State s 2011 2020 Strategic Plan OIT s mission is to provide nimble, effective, efficient, and collaborative IT services, solutions and strategies in a timely and helpful manner that assists the university, state and nation in achieving their strategic goals. Since 2009, OIT has been working on a three-phase Strategic Planning Process to provide a framework for the university s IT environment. The attached chart illustrates how OIT s strategic IT principles and underlying initiatives align with the goals of The Pathway to the Future: NC State s 2011-2020 Strategic Plan. Office of Information Technology Strategic Planning Process June 2012 Page 11
OIT Strategic Principles Provide better IT support for the campus community to achieve the mission of the university OIT Initiatives Supporting NC State's 2011-2020 Strategic Plan UNIVERSITY GOAL 1: Enhance the success of our students through educational innovation. UNIVERSITY GOAL 2: Enhance scholarship and research by investing in faculty and infrastructure. UNIVERSITY GOAL 3: Enhance interdisciplinary scholarship to address the grand challenges of society. UNIVERSITY GOAL 4: Enhance organizational excellence by creating a culture of constant improvement. UNIVERSITY GOAL 5: Enhance local and global engagement through focused strategic partnerships. OIT Key Strategic Initiatives Provide additional personnel in diverse functional areas to provide expertise, coding and business analysis in order to convert business needs into application environments. Goals Start Year 1 2 3 4 5 FY11 FY12 FY13 Ongoing Investment Priorities Provide a centralized sustainable model for technology support of many of the university's general purpose classrooms. Transition to a new Help Desk Call Center model with a new student-staffed Tier 1 component of the Help Desk, which provides improved availability of agents and a reduction in customers wait times. Provide a new Web Hosting Service that provides campus units a more cost-effective option to host their Web presence and to increase their flexibility and speed of deploying dynamic, database-driven website applications. Develop projects (Data Marts) that gather and mine data from many disparate university resources to provide meaningful analysis to help the campus make intelligent business decisions and improve academic success. Transition more than 3,000 employees to the new OIT Managed Desktop environment, which utilizes the Windows 7 operating system and provides more file space to users. OfficeofInfromationTechnologyInitiativesSuportingNCState's20112020StragicPlan 1
Provide more flexible tools to support the university Balance central versus distributed IT efforts Balance the Build, Buy or Outsource decision Identify critical file storage needs and reduce the overall number of file systems hosted locally. Co-lead with University Communications a multi-step effort to develop an effective, core internal communications system. Split the combined Student and the Human Resources Systems into two individual systems, in conjunction with the upgrades to version 9 in October 2012. Construct a new data center to address increased operational efficiency, energy conservation and data security. Help the university move to modern IT constructs such as cloud services. Upgrade the campus network backbone including data centers to support up to 40 Gb/s of network traffic. Completed Spring 2012. Upgrade the campus wireless infrastructure to the latest 802.11n standard. Launch a comprehensive identity management program to replace the university's existing aging infrastructure with the Oracle Identity Management Suite. Develop a IT Governance Structure for campus. Project was launched fall 2010 and completed fall of 2011. Develop a comprehensive and collaborative campus Strategic IT Plan. Require task committees to develop solution options (pros and cons) for major IT product, system or application purchases. OfficeofInfromationTechnologyInitiativesSuportingNCState's20112020StragicPlan 2
Providing safe, secure and operational IT foundational infrastructure Develop industry partnerships Use open source solutions where sufficient tools are available. Migrate employee email accounts to Google Apps @ NC State. Develop a comprehensive security framework based on ISO 27002 information systems standards to comply with the UNC-GA recommendation. Educate campus community on how to recognize and protect themselves from cyber security threats. Train security staff on how to detect, to respond to and to prevent cyber security threats and attacks. Expand the utilization of High Performance Computing (HPC) and the Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) to provide more support for faculty, while developing leading-edge cyber infrastructure models for networking, visualization and analytics. Provide the cloud computing infrastructure for the North Carolina Bio-Preparedness Collaborative project, which detects and analyzes biological threats to public health and safety. Collaborate on the implementation of the Centennial Outdoor Wireless Mesh Network Testbed for Research and Education (CentMesh), one of the country's first large-scale, outdoor, experimental wireless networks using open source software. OfficeofInfromationTechnologyInitiativesSuportingNCState's20112020StragicPlan 3