Rampoint Portal Update Presentation to the UTFAB Tuesday October 28, 2008 Scott Baily, Interim Director, ACNS

UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation Today’s Agenda Historical Context Rampoint Challenges Portal Assessment Emerging Technology Recommendation Supplemental Budget Request October 28, 2008 UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation

UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation Historical Context Part of the original SIS upgrade project, intended to provide: Single point of entry to CSU services Customized and personal content Group and course communication tools Framework for accessing SIS October 28, 2008 UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation

UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation Projected Timeline Purchased: Fall 2003 Portal initial availability: Fall 2004 130 locally-developed channels Portal phase 2 (more content): Fall 2005 185 locally-developed channels Full ARIES launch: Fall 2006 October 28, 2008 UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation

UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation Portal Assessment Luminis platform upgrade overdue Required (both hardware and software) Expensive $125K for Server Hardware $85K/year software Painful, according to peer institutions Two committees formed in 2008 Assess Usage Develop Recommendations October 28, 2008 UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation

UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation Committee Findings Usage of Rampoint is very limited Campus priority has been in developing services ‘around’ the portal (RAMWeb, RamCT, Email (Google Apps), iTunesU Service dependencies inside Rampoint are few Research Services, ARIESweb, group collaboration Every other service has access outside of Rampoint One common software dependency The ‘message broker’ that provides course enrollment data to RamCT and Rampoint October 28, 2008 UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation

UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation Emerging Technology Oracle Portal for faculty and staff Initially to support HR benefit management application Recent momentum also includes access to: Campus reporting tools Research Services applications New financial system (Kuali) Other administrative applications RAMWeb Now a load balanced, very robust architecture Capable of providing most of the Rampoint functionality October 28, 2008 UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation

UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation Recommendations Two development efforts Students – Continue to extend RAMWeb to include access to additional highly visible services such as RamCT, Google Apps and iTunesU Faculty/Staff applications – Oracle Portal Decommission Rampoint as the student portal Support is paid through June, 2009 Avoids costly upgrade & maintenance Focus on development of services rather than maintaining costly infrastructure October 28, 2008 UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation

FY09 Budget Request Message Broker Replacement What the Message Broker does: Software that passes real time data to: Rampoint – Identities, roles RamCT – Identities, courses, instructors, enrollments Currently using Sun JMS Runs on the same (old) hardware as Rampoint JMS Costs $8300/year for maintenance Evaluating Open Source Replacement (ActiveMQ) Currently in testing phase at ACNS No cost, one-time or recurring Looking great so far October 28, 2008 UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation

UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation Budget Request Cont’d Purchase 2 Sun Servers 1 production, 1 development/backup $9,750 each, total request = $19,500 Includes 3 years of maintenance Better solution than maintaining JMS Purchase would not be made until full testing on existing systems is complete October 28, 2008 UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation

UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation UTFAB Checklist Criteria Benefit as many students as possible All student will benefit 2. Ability to effectively utilize the fee Your decision 3. Not funded by CFT Check 4. Adherence to budget and accountability 5. Potential for direct student use Absolutely 6. Effort, thought & clarity in the plan 7. Quantitative usage data Could obtain RamCT transaction counts 8. Financial co-sponsorship Central funding for all of RamCT 9. Central/distributed balance 10. Cost/benefit ratio October 28, 2008 UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation

UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation Questions Are most welcome October 28, 2008 UTFAB SIS Fall 08 Presentation