Collaboration Tools and Challenges at theUniversity of Washington

Tony Chang, Senior Strategic Integration Architect Computing and Communications

Scott Barker, Director of ITInformation School

May 9, 2007

University of Washington General Overview Largest public research university in the Northwest with major

campuses in Seattle, Tacoma, and Bothell 43,000 students (26,000 undergraduate, 2,000 graduate/professional) 27,000 total faculty and staff 3,600 instructional faculty 17 major schools and colleges 140 different departments in those schools and colleges

Ranked one of the top 20 universities in the world by multiple studies (#3 - #17)

Largest recipient of federal research funding of any public university in the US, and second largest overall since 1974 ($990 million in 2006) 6 Nobel Award winners 150 major research centers Over 20 National Institute of Health Research Cores and Centers of

Excellence External research funding supports 7,600 faculty/staff Over 200 companies have started based on UW research advances

UW Medical and Harborview Hospitals

Extreme Decentralization

Schools and Colleges are “kingdoms” with their own IT funding, IT staff, and IT strategy

Do what they want on desktop Create their own services as needed Staff and fund it themselves Some have lots of resources and go their own way, others

have few resources and rely on central offerings for all Often are kingdoms within kingdom

Individual faculty members or researchers may have their own funding, IT staff, and IT strategy.

Approximately 1,000 IT/IS/IM staff in these groups May be little or no coordination between these kingdoms,

but situation is selectively improving Open access is the general rule, with exceptions for

student/patient data

Organization Overview

Computing and Communications (C&C) provides a central IT organization for the university

500 people Central Activities

Networks UWNetID authentication and services LOB application hosting – most custom developed Some desktop services and support Central Unix email and Oracle calendaring Portal development – custom developed with LOB integration Information Services and Data Warehousing

Limited authority across campus Historically Unix centric Historically some tension with C&C and depts but improving

Central Computing

Diverse set of technology

Windows - 63% Mac - 25% Linux/Unix - 11% If there is an OS, an application or multiple versions of

something, we have it!

Large network infrastructure

140,000 unique devices since January 2007 75,000 wired network devices in use per day, 7,000 wireless Campus backbone traffic > 40 TB/day 60% of campus wireless so far, coverage in 58 buildings No perimeter “firewall” for campus, although many 172

private/NAT addresses and firewalls in place around specific hosts Intrusion Prevention Systems block about 185,000 security

attacks per day

Technology Overview

Lots of everything Departmental SharePoint sites Confluence & Media Wiki Blackboard & Moodle (Course Management/Courseware) Catalyst Tools (UW developed collaboration suite) Free Internet Tools (BaseCamp, MySpace) IM – every known client Video conferencing – again everything, some even custom

developed at UW Streaming lectures/classes – Adobe Connect, Streaming MP3s,

iTunes U

Central UW Email Infrastructure Unix Pine, WebPine, IMAP based (Deskmail)

Central Oracle Calendaring Service (3,000 users)

Departmental Exchange servers (all in silos)

Existing Collaboration Tools

Business Problem

What can we do together (schools/colleges in cooperation with C&C) to improve collaboration for our users?

Long-Term Goal:

Be anyplace, be anyone, work anytime with us

Anyone includes: Faculty, staff, students and external collaborators Facilitating external collaborators is a key to success

Collaboration Spaces

Our Vision

Be anyplace, be anyone, work anytime with us MS Collab Application Platform

AD provisioned accountsExchange and Sharepoint 2007

Working with standards bodies/consortiumsInternet2CalConnect

Leverage Vendor Web Services

Email Collaboration

Calendar Free/Busy Collaboration

Online Workspace Collaboration

Take Aways - Highlights

Collaboration tools work well for internal audience

Standards involvement is helping out (ie Shibboleth/SAML)

MS Collab Apps has a strong set of features for wide future adoption Making first steps now Looking for better interoperability story for the future

MS Product Improvements Lack of Academic features (templates/office hour

scheduling) Takes a huge effort for implementation External collaboration is challenging

No guarantee our vision will be met however we can still make progress

Adherence to standards important to our mission for collaboration

More services for collaboration in the cloud

Take aways – Where we can do better

QUESTIONS?

Collab Tools Usage MatrixCollaboration Tools

Type Audience Supplied

Departmental SharePoint sites

General Collaboration

Staff/Faculty Vendor

Confluence & Media Wiki

General Collaboration

Staff/Faculty/Researchers

Vendor

Blackboard & Moodle

Course Management System

Students/Faculty Vendor/Open Source

Catalyst Tools General Collaboration\Course Management System

Students/Faculty UW developed

Free Internet Tools (BaseCamp)

General Collaboration

Open Source

IM (Every known product)

Communication Everyone Vendor/Open Source/UW

Video Conferencing (Every known solution)

Communication Researchers/Students/Faculty

Vendor/Open Source/UW