Enterprise Systems Committee (ESC)
February 2, 2004
Present: Bill Post, Brooke Banks, Brenda Aden, Len Fisk, Don Graham, Arno Rethans, Wendi
Beane, Charlie Crabb, Ed Masterson, Bruce Rowen, Dennis Graham, Kim Williams
1. Portals
A diverse team of individuals are working together to determine the direction that is best for
our campus for the future of the portal. The group has narrowed down their list of
possibilities to three: Luminus, uPortal, and PeopleSoft portal. The team is in process of
putting together a grading sheet to use to evaluate these three products. We are still waiting
to get verification of some of the costs of these products. It is expected that a decision will
be made within the next three weeks.
2. Email Update
There has been a marked improvement in email service within the past couple of weeks.
Equipment was replaced during the first part of January pursuant to Dell’s recommendation.
Maintenance will continue which will involve rebuilding the Outlook servers during spring
break. Some services (such as virus checking and Outlook Web Access) will be moved off
of the primary Outlook servers onto other servers. No changes are expected in the way you
will access your mail via the web.
3. SPAM blocking update
A team is examining spam solutions and will have a technical recommendation in a few
weeks. Coming up with a technical solution for blocking SPAM is relatively easy. The
difficulty is in setting policy to determine what constitutes “SPAM.” More information will
be available after the technical review is complete.
4. Telephone Service – PBX strategy
A document entitled “PBX Telephone System Strategy” was distributed to members. The
campus has used Pacific Bell/SBC Centrex services for over 30 years. Because of
inadequate and aging cabling and wiring, replacing Centrex with a campus-owned telephone
system was not cost effective. The TII project was/is going to upgrade our cabling and
wiring. However, the completion of the TII project has probably been delayed until 2005 or
2006. This has created a longer delay in the campus capturing savings from reducing SBC
line charges. The savings are necessary to at least partially offset the lost revenue from the
campus student phone business that has for years supported the campus data network.
Communication Services will be recommending a technical solution that will meet current
and future telecommunications needs. The recommended technology will provide some mix
of analog, digital, and Voice over IP utilizing the existing old wiring infrastructure. The
systems currently being considered are from Avaya, Nortel, Cisco, and EADS. The PBX
Project Team is close to providing a recommendation based on the evaluation of features and
functionality balanced with the cost. Implementation is expected to begin summer 2004, and
is very much hinging on the completion of underground cabling and fiber from the TII
project. Further delays in completing this subset of the TII project will significantly hamper
implementing a campus telephone system.
5. Aging Desktop Computers
Evaluation of the security and support costs for our aging desktop computer inventory has
been ongoing. Several hundred NT Windows machines will no longer be supported by
Microsoft for security updates after June 2004. User Services is working with various units
on campus to upgrade most of these machines to Windows 2000 in order to avoid cutting
their network connections when they become a security risk. Even after the upgrade, the
campus will have hundreds of machines that are at the end of their useful life. In recognition
of the fact that the current budget crisis may last for several more years, this spring,
Information Resources, the B2000 Committee and the Enterprise Systems Committee will be
working together to develop a least cost replacement model.
6. Security/Firewall Update
The installation is moving a bit slower than originally expected. We will probably
implement in late February/early March, a few weeks later than originally planned. We are
moving ahead with testing on a subnet in Butte Hall. Once the bugs are worked out, the plan
is to pilot in Siskiyou Hall. The installation should only affect any servers that have not been
registered that would need a hole in the firewall.
7. Adjournment
All other discussions were deferred to a future meeting.
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