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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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, (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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

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