Office of Information Technology searches for ways to cut expenditures and save money

Departments at the University are looking for ways to reduce budget expenses and the Office of Information Technology (OIT) is no exception.

Headed by Marc Hoit, Vice Chancellor at OIT, the department has been reviewing several methods to reduce the budget from technology perspective in the coming years. 
"We have been brainstorming ideas and performing calculations to decide the best possible investments," Hoit said. 

Four components make up the base of the current recommendations, including outsourcing campus e-mail, requiring students to provide their own computer, unifying Web hosting and implementing a virtual desktop environment. 

The first method to reduce the budget would be to discontinue the use of Cyrus, the University's current e-mail system.

Students on campus already feel the current system is not up to par with the current demands of e-mail, lacking sufficient storage or the ability to display images, according to Chelsey Core, a junior in fashion and textile management, who has her campus-based e-mails forwarded to her Google account.

"The current [e-mail] system is ineffective and outdated," Core said. 

Hoit put an e-mail task force into place last fall and the group recently released its report recommending outsourcing the University's e-mail system to Google's Gmail. The task force detailed how at least $60,800 could be saved per academic year and how students could benefit from additional tools provided by Google accounts. 

Requiring each to student to provide his or her own computer coincides with the University's strategy to reduce the amount of general-use computer labs on campus.
By reducing the general-use labs, the campus benefits by not investing in new equipment and maintenance fees for the hardware. 

While a large portion of the students enrolled already prefer having a computer before their first day, some students feel reducing computer labs is detrimental to the educational environment, like Julian Mack, a sophomore in English.

"Computer labs are convenient and develop an environment for work," Mack said. 
Some departments on campus require both complex equipment and expensive software that the University would not expect the students to provide on their own.

The College of Engineering is one example that uses equipment not easily attainable by students. 

The third strategy is to unify Web hosting and related services and migrate the applications to content managed systems.

There is already a pilot in place to test this money-saving strategy.

If successful, the University could decide to invest in its own servers and software to keep the services in house. The other option is to again outsource the service to a third-party firm. 
"This would be an option if we could still provide services similar to the current system," Hoit said. "If we could keep the costs competitive with commercial services." 

Besides the potential to reduce the budget, students said a unified system can increase productivity on campus. 

"Unifying Web hosting is a good way to advance how employees and students connect, communicate and collaborate across the University," Joseph Randolph, a junior in
computer engineering, said. 

The final strategy proposed by OIT includes moving current computer systems to a virtual desktop.

By not having a specific hardware device, users would be able to access their data and applications from anywhere. 

"It allows [information technology] departments to reduce management and also reduce costs for support and desktop hardware," Randolph said. 

Some colleges at the University already use a virtual desktop and have seen reduced support calls by 80 percent, according to the OIT.

The strategies are still in the planning phase and would require more input from administration, the OIT and students, Hoit said.

According to Hoit, the strategies are planned to be put into place by the beginning of the next academic year but are more likely to be implemented over a period of time.