ICT Infrastructure Strategy and Technical Direction

ICT Infrastructure Strategy Has a vision and guiding principles Defines the Technical Environment Defines and maintains a progressive IT roadmap for service delivery and development The overall aim is to define the technical environment and direction that the IT roadmap will follow such that centrally provided and faculty/department provided services meet the University’s requirements over an agreed timeframe Identifies standards based ‘cost effective’ technology that will provide supportable ‘timeline' and evolutionary solutions to the above

ICT Infrastructure Vision The University will provide a feature rich, integrated, supportable and secure technological environment that provides staff and students with seamless, any time, any place, access to the Information Technology resources that support and enhance their activities.

ICT Infrastructure Environment May be Categorised as Persistent – ‘Always on’ Transparent – Integrated and reliable Dynamic – Relevant over time Borderless – Accessible from anywhere Flexible – Able to adapt Community based – To enhance activities

Guiding Principles The University recognises the strategic importance of information technology and is prepared to invest in the continual development of its IT resources The University will develop and communicate policies and strategies that will govern the use and provide direction on support of IT resources The University sees value for money as an important consideration in all IT investments and will seek to take advantage of economies of scale wherever possible The University will implement industry standards, best practice and supportable solutions

Guiding Principles The University will promote an ICT Service ethos supported by the most appropriate technology The University is a major research led institution and as such places demands on the technical infrastructure The University will seek to maximise the opportunities offered by external funding where the activities to be undertaken can be properly resourced in terms of staffing and which dovetail with the IT roadmap IT resources must be of a high quality, secure and universally available to authorised users

Guiding Principles The University recognises that support overheads must be addressed when costing IT investments The University will increasingly adopt IT to support its core functions, users will become increasingly IT aware and expect access to feature rich, reliable, secure, integrated and easy to use services Users will increasingly require access to IT resources via a variety of devices including personal computers, portable computers, PDAs and other mobile devices Communities will be established to promote effective consultation, knowledge transfer, sharing of best practice and avoidance of duplicated effort The University recognises the need for user and IT support staff training

Technical Environment Technical Infrastructure Core Services Network Applications and Services Common Teaching Research Admin User Base

Technical Infrastructure First Building Block for Strategic Service provision and development Provides Campus wide data communications infrastructure and Routing services Provides flexible connectivity options Provides Resilience, High Bandwidths, QoS and security Implements Industry standard solutions

Core Services Second Building Block for strategic service provision and development Brings strategic services together under a single management domain to achieve economies of scale and consistency of provision Provides services that are sustainable, resilient and highly available e.g Access to technical infrastructure including Flexible and remote access DNS and IP address management E-Mail relays, SPAM filtering Web Services, caching Information Security services File store delivery and data management Directories and ID management

Common Services Access to E-mail and other personal communications methods Access to WWW including rich media content Security including advice, incident response and patch management Access to serviced desktop environments providing common authentication schemes network file store, print services, platform security and relevant applications Support – help desk, specialist teams and training Site licenses and license management for common applications

Applications and Services Provides specific solutions for University strategic requirements e.g To leverage the benefits of IT in support of the University’s core activities; Requires Applications and Services definition and implementation Integration with technical infrastructure and core services Delivery and support Ongoing review Management and support domains need not be the same but should be consistent and co-operative

Teaching Open access and Faculty specific clusters operating common authentication schemes and desktop environments; providing, security file store, print and relevant applications Portals and VLE Interactive Video teaching Flexible access facilities for accessing IT resources using personal systems

Research Access to high bandwidth Local Area Network connections Flexibility in accommodating research projects requiring special features Access to high performance computing resources; locally, nationally and internationally Ability to store and manipulate large data sets Access to worldwide virtual organisations and research communities

Administration Holistic approach to corporate information systems development Secure and authenticated access to corporate information systems Integration with other connected systems to provide comprehensive solutions e.g., Agresso, WebSURF, ExamSURF, HR systems etc

User Base Staff, Students and other partners Must have access to relevant, reliable and secure Information Technology resources User view will be via a suitable Platform providing access to common resources and all necessary teaching, research and administration resources

ICT Infrastructure Roadmap Third Building Block For strategic provision and development The ICT Infrastructure Roadmap identifies the proposed work programmes required to meet the aspirations of the ICT Infrastructure Strategy. The work programmes cover a three year planning horizon i.e., the current financial year and the two following financial years. The roadmap for each year identifies all areas of strategic activity as well as areas where specific funding is required.

ICT Roadmap Funding requirements for 2005/06 Activity Cost Source Enhance Networks in University Buildings £100K University Network segmentation Campus backbone network upgrade £410K SRIF-3/LTIF Service Sustainability Video Conferencing replacement £200K LTIF Flexible Access £40K Student clusters £500K Patch Management £10K Software licence policy management £50K IT Staff Training Totals 950K Other 610K

ICT Roadmap Funding requirements for 2006/07 Activity Cost Source Enhance Networks in University Buildings £100K University Network segmentation Campus backbone network upgrade £410K SRIF-3/LTIF – if slippage Service Sustainability £100k Disaster recovery/Business continuity £50k Flexible Access £50K File store and server consolidation Student clusters £500K Extend dark fibre contracts for teaching hospitals £20K per annum onto CS unavoidable expenditure ClydeNET Upgrades £870K covering 4 years SHEFC/UKERNA

ICT Roadmap Funding requirements for 2007/08 Activity Cost Source Enhance Networks in University Buildings £100K University Network segmentation Computer room enhancements New Builds Service Sustainability £100k Disaster recovery/Business continuity £50k Flexible Access £50K File store and server consolidation £75K Student clusters £? Unified Messaging ClydeNET Upgrades £870K covering 4 years (2006-2009) SHEFC/UKERNA Totals 550K (+) Other Part of 870K