ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Monday, December 8, through Thursday, December 18. We understand that this time of year is a critical period with students and faculty trying to meet end of semester obligations.  ITS will defer changes to systems and services that might have a production impact in order to minimize potential outages during this high-anxiety period.  Changes required to respond to emergent situations will be duly evaluated and pursued only if their need is significant. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have comments, questions, or concerns.

ITS has completed a design for the university Microsoft Office 365 initiative and would like to ask for any final feedback. Microsoft Office 365 is an organized collection of cloud-based business productivity technologies that integrates enhanced communication and collaboration tools.  It is well aligned towards individuals and their ability to personally leverage technology.  Adoption of this architecture represents a departure from the traditional way IT is centrally delivered at the University.  For this reason, ITS has pursued this project methodically and requested feedback throughout the process to ensure that the end product would be robust and also effectively meet the diverse needs of our constituents.  We have now completed a design, which is the outcome of a rigorous internal and external vetting process. You can review the design documentation on our Microsoft Office 365 website: http://office365.uconn.edu/.  As we begin implementation planning, we ask that you send any final feedback to Josh Boggs at josh.boggis@uconn.edu.  Once we complete the implementation and transition project plan, we will no longer be seeking input on the des

The ITS Technology Support Center, located in the Math-Science Building M037 and on the first floor (Homer Commons) of the Homer Babbidge Library, provides first contact support and assistance to the university community for the wide variety of services provided by the organization. Our services and their associated support have historically had community centric differences based on major group affiliation (i.e., faculty, staff or student). Unfortunately, this resulted in varied customer experiences and confusion depending on how individuals approached the organization. Based on feedback from faculty, staff, and students, ITS restructured our Technology Support Center at the beginning of the semester to include a mix of HuskyTech student employees and full-time staff. This was done so that all members of our community, regardless of affiliation, would have consistent support options and, more importantly, a high-quality customer experience. These changes have allowed ITS to pursue process and resource efficiency goals while better meeting the individual needs and expectations of our customers. The past months have validated the preliminary changes, and with your assistance, we are committed to continued development of the Technology Support Center. Your support and feedback remains key to its successful evolution, and we welcome any insights or observations you might share. Please contact Pat Meinweiser with comments, questions, or concerns.

ITS has implemented selected redesigns of the Student Administration (SA) System to address structural problems that resulted in service disruptions during the registration process. The SA system is a hub for student information and activity and is widely used by faculty, students, staff, and alumni. They experienced numerous problems with login, authorization, kick-outs, and browser incompatibility.  These service issues were caused by firewall performance, browser connection, and application software issues.  ITS engineered network changes to increase reliability and performance and deployed a new load balancing infrastructure to improve the interaction between client browsers and the SA application.  These fixes were implemented at the beginning of October, and the peak registration cycle has now concluded without the raft of service calls that occurred at the beginning of the semester.  ITS will continue to assess the infrastructure and to make selected changes and upgrades to improve the experience of our community.

ITS is beginning a series of infrastructure enhancements that may require updating end-of-life (EOL) operating systems on devices that are connected to the network. ITS announced this past spring and throughout the summer that Windows XP and Mac OS 10.7 were end of life and would no longer be supported.  Older operating systems are not maintained by the vendor and are increasingly difficult to operate in our environment.  We will offer possible workarounds where these exist, but ITS cannot avoid important maintenance in deference to devices with unsupported operating systems.  Unfortunately, such equipment will be increasingly unable to utilize network services over time. We will be happy to explore options with you.  Please do not hesitate to contact us for information and assistance.

ITS is expanding its enterprise workflow services by offering web form development with IBM Forms Experience Builder (FEB). The University currently uses many paper-based workflow processes, which can be both slow and inefficient.  Automating these processes by creating electronic workflows using traditional programming languages, however, is both difficult and time consuming.  FEB is a tool designed specifically to develop and deploy data-centric web form applications.  It is simpler to use and far faster from concept to production than older approaches.  With FEB, the Applications and Technology Solutions (ATS) group can produce better results in less time (less cost) and even add advanced functionality such as workflow stages or the ability to track and analyze results. Additional information about FEB is available at the following location: https://its.uconn.edu/.  Requests for form development can be sent to http://serviceit.uconn.edu/.

The upgraded and expanded Virtual Private Network (VPN) services, deployed on September 15th, have replaced the old VPN portal. On October 6th the old system, vpn.uconn.edu, will no longer be available. The new VPN portal is accessible via the Web at https://sslvpn.uconn.edu and via client software for OS X, Windows, iOS, and Android devices. When you transition to the new VPN services, be aware that you will need to re-create your personal bookmarks and that clients receive different IP addresses than the legacy system. Additional information is available at the following location: http://remoteaccess.uconn.edu.

ITS is now in the design phase of the Microsoft Office 365 initiative. In the research phase, we received significant positive feedback with some questions and concerns from our UConn IT community.  Using this information, we produced a tentative design that was reviewed by the ITS IT Technical Partners governance body.  The architecture is now at a point where we have begun preliminary planning for an implementation. ITS is searching for volunteers to test Office 365 and provide us with feedback about their experience.  Testers will be given a temporary account and the opportunity to get an early look at the service.  If you would like to participate, send us a message at365@uconn.edu with your name, netID, contact information, and position within the University.  Information about the service and the project is available at http://office365.uconn.edu. We appreciate your patience and support as ITS continues to make progress on improving services for our faculty and staff.

ITS will deploy an updated and upgraded Virtual Private Network (VPN) service on September 15th. VPN services have been utilized historically to provide authenticated access to the university network from remote locations and thereby allow customers to safely and securely utilize certain restricted services from outside the university.  Juniper has stopped providing support for the existing hardware, and this has produced numerous problems for our community when they use the old access client.  The new infrastructure will be current, fully supported, and consistent with contemporary approaches and re-architected to double its network bandwidth.  Web access will be available, but there are also clients for iOS, Android OS, Windows, and OS X.  We are deploying the infrastructure in a high availability configuration at two disparate locations to provide a more robust experience than the current implementation. Additional information is available at the following location: http://remoteaccess.uconn.edu.