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Technology Advisory Council Meeting- May 2, 2003

Attendees: Kurt Collins, Tony Coulson, Jim Monaghan, Mike Ross, Kevin Beecher (Steve Cuddigan’s rep), Owen Owens, Carolyn Aldana, Dick Botting, Bill Takehara, Joe Scarcella, Ron Pendleton (guest), Ramiro Diazgranados

The minutes from the April 18^th meeting were reviewed and approved.

Phone Fee Committee ?Kurt Collins reported.

Smart Classroom Committee ?Mike Ross reported that because there is no crucial deadline the Subcommittee is establishing guidelines for next year.

Blackboard server Committee - Jim Monaghan - passed out specs on usage and minimum hardware requirements. Current use is over the current license and is overloading the current server. The desire is to expand 1 server at a time. $11,000 would license another 3000 students. Another scalable, more robust solution that splits out the database from the storage and would allow every student to have a Blackboard account is $60,000 each year. Some discussion ensued regarding whether this should be a responsibility of BATS. It was suggested that alternate funding should be sought.

Conclusion: BATS needs to fund R&D and that funding ongoing projects isn’t possible on BATS? budget. This should apply to other software licenses funded by BATS in the past. The Blackboard Subcommittee is to write a proposal and submit it to BATS. Then BATS will make it a recommendation and forward the proposal to Dr. Aguilar and Dr. Fernandez to find baseline funding for Blackboard.

Citrix Subcommittee ?Tony Coulson briefly reviewed its history and goals. Help is needed from IRT to produce a proposal for authentication. Approximately $10,000 is needed to fund the NAS test because Dell has not been forthcoming with a loaner. The Subcommittee is leaning towards centralized storage and centralized authentication and the test would progress over the summer. It was reminded that other vendors are interested in helping like Hewlett Packard and Apple. And Apple has a NAS with authentication for $13,000. It is recommended that all servers point to a single LDAP server to have a single sign on to improve maintenance and management issues.

Computer Funding Issue: It was reiterated that BATS should do R&D and focus on universal Campus issues and not be in the computer purchase business. The Committee discussed its stand on the computer issue. One point brought up is the mind set of the Colleges which are used to BATS? assistance in funding computers. So the change in BATS?mission gives the Colleges short notice to readjust. A suggestion to ease the Colleges into the change was to give some money with the criteria to create a technology committee for their college and establish a technology project. At the end of the year they should report to BATS on how the project went. The reports can be published to campus through the web site.

Because TNS received 30 wireless devices and has purchased 20 more with the intention of distributing them across the campus, Owen Owens suggested BATS should buy wireless laptops for the colleges instead of computers.

Several arguments were made for buying computers this year and as opposed to rolling it over to next year or buying laptops with wireless cards instead of buying desktop computer for colleges

A motion was made to have $100,000 be set aside for the colleges. $20,000 would go to each College after each submits a proposal for spending the $20,000. The proposal deadline is May 16 and if no prop is submitted then the money is withdrawn. The motion was seconded. All voted in favor except one negative vote. The motion passed.

Another proposal for $50,000 (total) was presented for a large Unix-based server for Mac/Apple computers. Because Apples don’t work well with Citrix this product would cover all the Apples in A&L, ACM and COE. Other benefits include enabling A&L to do without new computers and cuts down on the number of technicians needed. This also supports a wireless environment and is similar to the Citrix solution. It also provides cross platform storage. This is a possible NAS storage solution. It also assists with software licensing issues, would serve 300 ? 400 users with a single source authentication for Macs.

A motion was made to accept this proposal. The motion was seconded. Some discussion of this proposal’s merits ensued. A suggestion was made to table the motion until next meeting. It was agreed and will be voted on at the next meeting. All questions are to be directed to Kurt and all discussions to be done before next meeting. Issues to be clarified are its benefits and the possibility of a scaled down system.

Campus Inventory Issues: The criterion for the quick inventory of computer users was handed out with a request to critique the matrix. Any holes and suggestions can be made at the next meeting. An observation was made that there is an established site that defines computer users. It is found at the International Computer Driving License (ICDL US) site. http://www.icdlus.com/index.html

Meeting closed at 3:10. Next meeting will be Friday, May 16 at 1:00 pm in PL-002d.