ITS has been preparing for the opening of the Fall 2000 semester
beginning earlier and working harder than any previous year. With
a four-year replacement cycle on essentially all information technology,
much must be replaced in a very short period of time each summer.
Faculty and staff have been the beneficiaries of one of our major
institutional efforts...earlier distribution of computer hardware
in the summer. With about 1200 College-owned computers and the
requirement under our replacement plan to purchase about 300 new
computers, reallocate about 250 older computers, and decommission
300 oldest computers, a staggering total of 850 computers are
handled. We have previously been hampered by the fiscal year requirement
to wait until after the beginning of July to open the boxes of
any new computers purchased with new fiscal year funds. That allowed
about 25 minutes per machine for unpacking, preparation, moving,
software and file migration, checking, and answering of any questions.
It also meant that many faculty and staff did not get new or other
replacement computers until very late in the summer or even well
into the fall.
Through the support of the senior staff, especially Arnie Yasinski,
Administrative VP, and Doug Reinhardt, Treasurer, additional funds
were provided toward the end of the 1999-2000 fiscal year to purchase
about half of the newly allocated computers in May. This same
sum will subsequently be deferred during the 2000-2001 fiscal
year until the end of the year, thus perpetuating at least a sizable
early purchase of equipment.
We began receiving large shipments of computers shortly after
finals ended this past May for processing in the College inventory,
configuration, and distribution. By the end of June nearly 25%
of the distribution was done, including meeting needs of those
departing early on sabbatical leaves. We were also much farther
along in the preparations for distribution of another 25%. In
addition, we were able to order and have delivered during June
most of the rest of the computers being purchased, although these
were held as an embargoed inventory until the new fiscal year
began.
Handling 300 new computers has been a big challenge for our Academic
ITS group and the distribution assistants (Kim Hawkes, David Lamarre,
Amanda Langlais, Neil Mower, Jeffrey Shattuck, and Julie York).
The total volume of the boxes was over 2,000 cubic feet. We were
able to take over several seminar rooms and classrooms in Lovejoy
before the rooms were needed by Special Programs.
As of the end of July, when we usually have been barely able to
get started with new computers, we were over half way finished
and continued to be very busy but not frantic. There will be some
distribution that will continue into September, especially in
those departments where this works out better in their own schedules.
Here is the breakdown on new computers that were purchased this
summer:
| Dell
Optiplex GX110 600 |
--14% |
| Dell
Optiplex GX110 733 |
---
4% |
| Dell
Latitude LS |
--- 6% |
| iMac
with 160MB RAM |
--54% |
| Mac
G4 Minitower 450 |
--- 7% |
| Mac
PowerBook G3/400 |
--15% |
There continues to be slow migration of some departments from
Macintosh to Dell computers (the Business Office in particular)
but faculty and staff who have been using Macs are not interested
in making the migration to Windows. Apple computer continues to
provide significant, innovative products highly relevant to the
academic endeavor. Of course, there are also many aspects of the
Windows environment that make it the most appropriate platform
for some of Colby's faculty and staff.
One of the new systems with which we are experimenting this summer
is the Citrix Windows Server as part of the implementation of
the EMS facility scheduling software. While those doing final
room scheduling must run a Windows application, we anticipate
running this client software on the Citrix Server with a viewer
running on the individual's Macintosh computer. We expect this
application to work well and avoid the necessity of these people
changing all their computing operations to Windows just to gain
access to one application. There may be other applications in
the College for which this approach will be useful and cost effective.
Of course, for an individual needing regular access to an assortment
of Windows applications, this is not a good substitute for changing
to Windows.
There are two areas of the Windows environment where we will not
be making any significant changes until the summer of 2001. First,
we are deferring any migration to the Windows 2000 operating system.
There are compatibility issues that remain unresolved, so College
computers will stay with Windows NT 4.0. Students are advised
to use Windows 98 or Windows 95 for older computers.
We are also delaying the distribution of Microsoft's Office 2000
for Windows. Again, there are a few compatibility issues that
we will not be able to resolve until later in order to provide
a support structure that can accommodate new versions of Word,
Excel, and PowerPoint. Students with Windows computers are being
provided with Office 97 at no charge under the Microsoft Campus
Agreement. Dell computers purchased through the Bookstore come
with Office 97 pre-installed at no charge for the software.
Microsoft is preparing a new version of Office for the Macintosh.
The current version is Office 98, but during the next year Office
2001 is to be released. During the academic year we will be working
on implementation plans for Windows 2000, Office 2000, and Office
2001. Information will be provided as plans develop.
An area where many technology upgrades have been taking place
yet are largely hidden is in the network wiring closets around
campus, especially in the academic and administrative buildings.
The network upgrade project approved by the trustees in January
is nearing completion. Much of the 3Com network electronics is
being replaced with equipment from Foundry Networks, resulting
in an increase in the speed of the inter-building network backbone
to 1 Gigabit per second. These segments now connect Miller Library,
Keyes, Olin, Roberts, Lovejoy, Cotter Union, Lunder, and Garrison
Foster. In cooperation with PPD we have also made operational
redundant fiber optic connections to make the network less susceptible
to outages as a result of physical damage or equipment failure.
Because the campus network radiates from this gigabit network
core, there will be a significant benefit to the entire college,
including the residence halls, in connecting to the central servers
and other campus resources. The displaced network equipment in
these upgrades is going into the residence halls to upgrade the
inter-building connections to 100 Megabits. This is the first
of a multi-year network upgrade project.
It seems that everyone has been interested in our efforts to upgrade
the connection to the Internet, as well. Last spring we were finally
able to add a second T1 connection but this was still inadequate.
This summer we have been working twoards an installation of a
partial T3 as a replacement for the two T1s, which will increase
the data flow capacity from about 3 Megabits per second to 10
Mbps. A major concern is the very high level of "recreational
network use" from the residence halls, which has saturated the
Internet connection. In the spring, we had one T1 dedicated to
the residence halls and the other dedicated to the academic and
administrative areas. The residence hall T1 was almost always
saturated by recreational use, making other uses by students nearly
impossible at times. As we move back to a single, albeit much
larger data pipe, we will be managing resources so that academic
and administrative uses work effectively. Although the legal issues
with Napster are likely to change some of the patterns of use,
students should be fully aware of the implications of any network-intensive
application that uses a scarce resource such as the connection
to the Internet.
We have continued with classroom technology upgrades as well.
Having already equipped more than half of the classrooms, laboratories,
and seminar rooms with projection and other display devices, we
are well into the replacement of equipment installed more than
four years ago. This summer 12 classroom projectors were replaced
and new systems were installed in several additional classrooms.
The strategy is to exceed faculty demand for these resources by
a small amount so there are options for expanded use during the
year, but not to over equip classrooms with projectors that are
not required.
All of this is, of course, geared toward the arrival of students
and the beginning of the new academic year. A major objective
of ours is to have every student computer fully operational and
on the network by the beginning of classes. This means that during
the three days prior to the start of classes we will have our
Colby Computer Connection 2000 teams in the residence halls assisting
students in solving any computer problems that they might be experiencing.
Students will have information about this resource in their rooms
when they arrive on campus.
With the start of the 2000-2001 academic year we are excited by
the diversity of interesting applications that faculty are using
in their courses and in their research. A great deal of creativity
is being applied and students appreciate the ways faculty enhance
the quality of courses through information technology. We in ITS
welcome all the new and returning students, the faculty, and staff,
and urge you to make full use of the technology in accessing and
using the information available. We are here to assist with any
problems and hope to provide new ways for you to use these resources.
