The computer center staff has spent a considerable amount of time this summer working on several behind the scene infrastructure projects. Though the results of these projects may not be immediately clear to our users, they lead the way for several important projects which will be of significant benefit.  These infrastructure projects have been necessary for for a few years and will now allow us to provide better service to everyone in the institution.

College Network
The largest undertaking this summer has been the replacement of all of the Jackson Campus’ network equipment. Up until now, we have been running our network on some aging equipment that served the college very well for 8-10 years. We can only hope that our new Cisco switches will last us half as long. To effectively upgrade the network in several of our buildings, we have also had to do some extensive rewiring. New cable was installed to connect most of the computers and printers back to one central network closet in each building.  These improvements will both improve your connection speeds and make it easier for us to manage the connections. This project also provides the necessary foundation for the campus-wide phone upgrades scheduled for the Fall 2008 semester.

Preparing for Virtualization
We have also been taking a very close look at virtualizing our servers and workstations. There are many very good reasons for us to explore this technology for our institution. It will allow us to be much more responsive with upgrading equipment, installing software, and managing access. Additionally, there will be some financially sound cost saving benefits.  I’ll be giving you more information about this initiative in the coming months, but I believe some of the benefits will become apparent.

MySCC Portal
We have been working on a campus-wide web portal for some time now.  In order to successfully implement this project, several other projects had to be completed.  You may have noticed that we have consolidated most of your college user accounts, which allows us to manage access to college services. Most of this consolidation has been completed and has paved the way for our newly released web portal.  We will be adding other features to this system in the coming months and hope that you will find it beneficial in your interactions with the college.

Online File Storage (aka Media Server)
One of the most requested items from our faculty members has been web server space for sharing media files such as audio, video, and presentations with students. As a result we have created a space where each individual may upload up to 4 gb worth of files.  Faculty and staff must individually request access to this server and will be responsible for creating, uploading, and updating their files. These files may then be linked to from any other college related web servers such as web pages, blogs, and even Blackboard.

I hope this information helps you to better understand the activities we have undertaken recently as well as provide general knowledge about some exciting upcoming projects.

Blogs have become a way of life for many in today’s electronic world.  They can contain a wealth of information about certain topics of interest and they chronicle the daily events in an organization. The sharing of this information is often not only useful for the organization itself, but for the Internet community as a whole.

The purpose of this blog will be to share information about the activities of Southwestern Community College Information Services Department, provide thoughts about information technology trends related to education, and to explain the methods taken to implement such technology into our production environment.