“Co-op Cloud” – Forming a cooperative to provide services, support and combined buying power to smaller, similar businesses.  Like a farm co-op, where small farms get together and share the expensive combine, pool purchasing to get better prices, pool management for some common and shared services – a Co-op cloud does the same.  This partnering to create a co-op allows these sim

So, I have been thinking about the cost of services and the effect of reaching scale.  When I discuss IT costs and systems with folks, most people are aware of the cost versus use curve and that as the use (size, number of users, etc) increases, you reach a scale of implementation where the cost to add more capacity flattens and each addition units cost is minimal.

The Go Live for the Registration and Records portion of the Student System on PeopleSoft is Feb 9.  This week the mainframe legacy student system was set into read only mode.  The record conversion process is being started.  Over the next week verification of conversion, clean up and other last minute finalizations will occur. 

OK, it’s the second week of the New Year and I haven’t blogged much.  I am finding Twitter much more convenient so I am posting more there.  I had a very restful vacation (actually, my computer blue screened so I could not do any work for a week).

Well – the Holidays are upon us. The university will be mostly closed for the next two weeks. Of course IT needs to keep running, so many of OIT staff will either be working or on call. I (and all of NCSU) appreciate the hard work and dedication of all OIT employees. Hopefully all will go well and no major issues so everyone

Well, I have been remiss. It has been a while since my last post and I am not yet in the habit of regular writing. Since my last post, a number of things have happened – luckily my tweets are a little more current.

Had a normal Monday – full of meetings. We met to plan the furniture for the Avent Ferry renovation. Many options. Gwen and Greg will work with the purchasing group to get a few options for the different layouts. Those will be shared and a final decision made on the company and layout options.

Participated in a conference call with the CIO’s from the ACC schools. A large part of the discussion was on how to protect sensitive data since it tends to be distributed. The different schools are using/implementing/planning various methods including full disk encryption (on critical machines), ID scanning, data security officers (from each college/unit) and more. With eDiscovery (federal law which treats electronic records like paper records retention) more emphasis is being focused on setting up more formal structures.

Met with Rob Yeager and David Wynne from the Information Systems, University Architecture division in Facilities. They have an excellent GIS based information system that includes all aspects of the NCSU infrastructure. The system has an enormous amount of data and they have done a great job of linking much of it together. This includes building information, utilit

Just finished a full day retreat with the MCNA advisory committee. It was a planning retreat to help develop a new strategic plan. It was an outstanding day and the effort created the beginnings of a set of goals and strategies to help guide the organization. More as the document develops.