It’s Not Simply Infrastructure: Tracy Futhey Talks about Networking and Innovation
An Interview with Duke University’s VP for IT and CIO
Tracy Futhey
Excerpted from an upcoming Q&A interview in Campus Technology magazine
Q: We’d like to ask you about national and regional networking
initiatives, specifically NLR and Internet2: What’s been happening at
those levels, and what will keep the momentum of these efforts moving toward
building services for all institutions?
A: We’re making wonderful progress on the national level,
on the regional level, and at the campus level, to start to take advantage of
the newly available optical networking capabilities. We’re moving from
the promise and the dream, to the reality of having very high-speed access from
end to end—one campus to another, one researcher to another—that
was historically only practical to expect within campus lab environments. The
projects that are going on now at the national level include National LambdaRail
and Internet2. I2 has a project called HOPI, hybrid optical packet infrastructure,
that’s using NLR infrastructure. That and other projects at the national
level are going to be introducing a whole new set of capabilities for faculty
researchers.
The regional build out of optical networking has really been impressive over
the last couple of years. For me, one of the key elements in participating and
moving those initiatives forward is providing faculty on our campuses with the
best access to research capabilities and the fewest barriers to collaboration
as possible. It is often the case that collaboration within a particular discipline
occurs across campus boundaries rather than within a single department. So,
through the high-speed optical capabilities that we’re trying to introduce,
we can make sure that a faculty member at Duke, for example, can communicate
and network with research faculty at the San Diego Supercomputing Center, or
at other supercomputing centers or universities—you name it. I’m
able to make sure that faculty have such capabilities on this campus, and to
collaborate with their colleagues at other campuses, without regard for the
fact that Durham, NC, where Duke is located, has historically not been viewed
as the networking center of the world.
Q: What specifically can be done with grid computing to improve research
computing environments for our campuses?
A: Grid and cluster computing are having an impact, not only within
the research lab; they are also providing important opportunities for faculty
to collaborate across disciplines. And if we do it right, we’ll create
opportunities for computing organizations to have a rejuvenated research computing
support environment for our faculty. Cluster computing, for example, takes significant
effort and system management to support, and in some cases, faculty may not
want to do that themselves. So as a central computing organization, figuring
out how we can support our faculty, and being flexible in the models of how
we try to do that, creates an important opportunity for faculty and IT department
interaction.
Q: You’ve been involved in significant network innovations. What
have you learned about the nature of innovation?
A: The most critical thing to me is tied to relationships with faculty.
In general in universities, in running our computing organizations, we don’t
take as great advantage as we might of our faculty’s experience and experimentation.
In terms of a strategy, I’m very big on the notion of working with faculty;
meeting with faculty in your computer science and engineering departments, in
your school of medicine, in art, in any domain, and understanding what capabilities
they need, or maybe what capabilities they themselves may be creating. That’s
the key to innovation: viewing technology not as simply infrastructure, but
as the gateway that can help provide faculty and students with advanced capabilities.
It’s not one-size-fits-all. There’s got to be collaboration and
connection with the academic units, and with the faculty in particular, to understand
capabilities and needs, and design around them.
Tracy Futhey will discuss “Technology Initiatives to Move the Campus Forward”
in a keynote at Syllabus2005,
July 24-28 in Los Angeles.
