Strategic Technology Planning >> Critical Thinking

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Strategic Technology Planning >> Critical Thinking

8/29/2006

By Matt Villano

As is so often the case, in trying to address the difficulties resulting from minimal staff support, ITS encountered an additional setback: cost. As a nonprofit entity, Fordham could not afford an expensive solution. So, officials were in need of a reliable web performance testing and monitoring solution that could also offer good value in terms of cost and customer service. According to Jason Benedict, director of computer services and operations, ITS required a solution that could serve as an “extra pair of eyes” when the team was not available. They would need it to keep track of the performance of the Fordham network servers, some of which were housed on campuses that were miles apart from one another.

TECH INITIATIVE TIP

Instead of focusing only on technology investment and savings, look at potential savings in staff numbers, energy usage, even real estate.

“Those servers are critical to everything we do,” he says. “We couldn’t hire anybody else [to manage them], but we needed a cost-effective way to make sure they always did what we wanted them to do.”

The solution came in the form of monitoring products from AlertSite. These tools helped to monitor all Fordham sites and applications, performing regular tests to ensure that academic grading, course registration, and university e-mail systems all were responsive and functioning. The tool’s diagnostic capabilities were also essential in distinguishing between campuswide network issues and individual connectivity problems. In addition, AlertSite supplemented these functions with timely and detailed notifications via e-mail and text message that made the ITS staff immediately aware of the type and severity of any network problem.

The alerts helped Fordham technologists immediately determine when problems warranted further investigation. On several occasions, AlertSite staffers phoned the ITS team to make sure they had seen the alerts, particularly when they felt ITS department personnel were not responding quickly enough. Benedict says these AlertSite services were important to keeping mission-critical Fordham University applications functioning at peak performance 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The continual monitoring also meets a third ITS need, in the form of compiling detailed reports that document network uptime and provide a clear historical record of the system’s overall performance.

“These tools are tireless responders— they don’t take vacation, they don’t get sick,” says Benedict. “I could do it all, but probably for a lot more money. With that in mind, this just makes sense.”

Digitizing Reports

Up the New York State Thruway at Cornell University, where the Information Technology department is commissioned with improving business intelligence and the access to it, officials have turned to technology to help them handle a multitude of internal IT department reports—more than 600 copies of paper-based business plans, strategic plans, and annual reports that were costing the institution hundreds of thousands of dollars in printing costs each year. Bob Bourdeau, assistant director of marketing for the university’s IT department, says his colleagues playfully refer to these reports as “the triad,” and notes that after years of spending time and money publishing triad hard copies, they started looking for ways to update the process late last year.