Collaboration Tools and Challenges at the University of Washington Tony Chang, Senior Strategic Integration Architect Computing and Communications Scott Barker, Director of IT Information School May 9, 2007

University of Washington General Overview  Largest public research university in the Northwest with major campuses in Seattle, Tacoma, and Bothell  43,000 students (26,000 undergraduate, 2,000 graduate/professional)  27,000 total faculty and staff  3,600 instructional faculty  17 major schools and colleges  140 different departments in those schools and colleges  Ranked one of the top 20 universities in the world by multiple studies (#3 - #17)  Largest recipient of federal research funding of any public university in the US, and second largest overall since 1974 ($990 million in 2006)  6 Nobel Award winners  150 major research centers  Over 20 National Institute of Health Research Cores and Centers of Excellence  External research funding supports 7,600 faculty/staff  Over 200 companies have started based on UW research advances  UW Medical and Harborview Hospitals

 Extreme Decentralization  Schools and Colleges are “kingdoms” with their own IT funding, IT staff, and IT strategy  Do what they want on desktop  Create their own services as needed  Staff and fund it themselves  Some have lots of resources and go their own way, others have few resources and rely on central offerings for all  Often are kingdoms within kingdom  Individual faculty members or researchers may have their own funding, IT staff, and IT strategy.  Approximately 1,000 IT/IS/IM staff in these groups  May be little or no coordination between these kingdoms, but situation is selectively improving  Open access is the general rule, with exceptions for student/patient data Organization Overview

 Computing and Communications (C&C) provides a central IT organization for the university  500 people  Central Activities  Networks  UWNetID authentication and services  LOB application hosting – most custom developed  Some desktop services and support  Central Unix and Oracle calendaring  Portal development – custom developed with LOB integration  Information Services and Data Warehousing  Limited authority across campus  Historically Unix centric  Historically some tension with C&C and depts but improving Central Computing

 Diverse set of technology  Windows - 63%  Mac - 25%  Linux/Unix - 11%  If there is an OS, an application or multiple versions of something, we have it!  Large network infrastructure  140,000 unique devices since January 2007  75,000 wired network devices in use per day, 7,000 wireless  Campus backbone traffic > 40 TB/day  60% of campus wireless so far, coverage in 58 buildings  No perimeter “firewall” for campus, although many 172 private/NAT addresses and firewalls in place around specific hosts  Intrusion Prevention Systems block about 185,000 security attacks per day Technology Overview

 Lots of everything  Departmental SharePoint sites  Confluence & Media Wiki  Blackboard & Moodle (Course Management/Courseware)  Catalyst Tools (UW developed collaboration suite)  Free Internet Tools (BaseCamp, MySpace)  IM – every known client  Video conferencing – again everything, some even custom developed at UW  Streaming lectures/classes – Adobe Connect, Streaming MP3s, iTunes U  Central UW Infrastructure  Unix Pine, WebPine, IMAP based (Deskmail)  Central Oracle Calendaring Service (3,000 users)  Departmental Exchange servers (all in silos) Existing Collaboration Tools

Business Problem  What can we do together (schools/colleges in cooperation with C&C) to improve collaboration for our users?  Long-Term Goal: Be anyplace, be anyone, work anytime with us  Anyone includes:  Faculty, staff, students and external collaborators  Facilitating external collaborators is a key to success

Collaboration Spaces World Researchers Higher Education Federation ResearchersFacultyStudents UW ResearchersFacultyStudentsStaff

Our Vision  Be anyplace, be anyone, work anytime with us  MS Collab Application Platform  AD provisioned accounts  Exchange and Sharepoint 2007  Working with standards bodies/consortiums  Internet2  CalConnect  Leverage Vendor Web Services

Collaboration UC Berkely on different platform Microsoft on the same platform UW Depts (similar and dissimilar platforms) iSchool (same platform)

Calendar Free/Busy Collaboration UC Berkely on different platform Microsoft on the same platform UW Depts (similar and dissimilar platforms) iSchool (same platform)

Online Workspace Collaboration UC Berkely on different platform Microsoft on the same platform UW Depts (similar and dissimilar platforms) iSchool (same platform)

Take Aways - Highlights  Collaboration tools work well for internal audience  Standards involvement is helping out (ie Shibboleth/SAML)  MS Collab Apps has a strong set of features for wide future adoption  Making first steps now  Looking for better interoperability story for the future

 MS Product Improvements  Lack of Academic features (templates/office hour scheduling)  Takes a huge effort for implementation  External collaboration is challenging  No guarantee our vision will be met however we can still make progress  Adherence to standards important to our mission for collaboration  More services for collaboration in the cloud Take aways – Where we can do better

QUESTIONS?

Collab Tools Usage Matrix Collaboration Tools TypeAudienceSupplied Departmental SharePoint sites General CollaborationStaff/FacultyVendor Confluence & Media Wiki General CollaborationStaff/Faculty/Researche rs Vendor Blackboard & MoodleCourse Management System Students/FacultyVendor/Open Source Catalyst ToolsGeneral Collaboration\Course Management System Students/FacultyUW developed Free Internet Tools (BaseCamp) General CollaborationOpen Source IM (Every known product) CommunicationEveryoneVendor/Open Source/UW Video Conferencing (Every known solution) CommunicationResearchers/Students/F aculty Vendor/Open Source/UW