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Projects

Information and Technology Services undertakes projects and programs to provide an unparalleled IT environment and accelerate creativity and innovation by U-M faculty, students, and staff. View the list of all current work.

ITS FY18 Priority Projects

Priority Projects are identified annually by the ITS leadership team in consultation with university executive leadership and university IT governance. The list is intended to be used as a decision-making tool for ITS staff to focus effort on the highest priority work first and to enable ITS to bring the greatest value to the university.

The following projects are ITS' Fiscal Year 2018 (July 2017–June 2018) priorities:

  • Develop Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) Compliance Strategy

    Sponsor: Andy Palms, Sol Bermann
    Project Manager:  Michael Meister

    Develop in partnership with University of Michigan Office of Research (UMOR), Michigan Medicine Compliance, Office of General Counsel (OGC), and Information Assurance a compliance program to support the university’s CUI compliance through the delivery of policy, process, security templates and training. Develop a CUI Public Cloud Strategy, and proof of concept, that maps out the technical and financial requirements including architecture, performance, roles and responsibilities, workflows, IT security controls, and costs. Includes collaboration with the implementation of Yottabyte Research Cloud (YBRC) for CUI Compliance and associated systems. 

  • Cloud Infrastructure Transformation Program (CITP)

    Sponsor: Andy Palms
    Program Manager: Michael Meister
    Project Managers:  Cristine Little, Paul Marker, Ryan Vis

    The Cloud Infrastructure Transformation Program (CITP) unites ITS in learning, migrating to, and leveraging cloud technologies to deliver modern and resilient services, when it makes technological and financial sense. The Cloud program will align the goals and projects associated with the cloud strategy under a single umbrella:

    • Deploy core infrastructure services in the cloud; reduce the dependency of cloud services to on-premise systems and infrastructure
    • Operationalize the Virtual Data Center (vDC) and provide enhancements to dynamically scale services, and enhanced monitoring capabilities
    • Complete an ITS-wide application inventory and use that basis to create a decision framework and proposed migration order via the Cloud Decision Framework & Application Roadmap Project (CFAR)
    • Stand up an environment necessary to test the suitability of running U-M’s PeopleSoft environment in the cloud
    • Provide training to staff on cloud fundamentals, automation and orchestration
    • Provide context and a consistent narrative to staff about the various ongoing cloud related initiatives within ITS

  • Research Computing Initiative

    Sponsor: Brock Palen
    Project Manager: Jennifer Burch

    The Research Computing initiative is a group of changes to existing and new at scale shared services to provide for enabling the research mission of the institution. These include High Performance Computing, Data Science, Sensitive Data, and cloud-enabled research. The project aims to bring predictable cost models and accessible capabilities to all faculty including data center to end user services. The Research Computing Initiative consists of three sub-projects, one of which has a dependency on the Data Center Relocation Project. These sub-projects include:

    • Flux Replacement/New High Performance Computing
    • Research Storage Expansion (Locker and DataDen)
    • Yottabyte Research Cloud (YBRC)

  • ITS Systems Data Center Relocation

    Sponsor: Andy Palms
    Project Manager:  Jeff Castle

    ITS Systems Data Center Relocation project is focused on preparing for and moving ITS systems out of the Michigan Academic Computing Center (MACC) to support the delivery of an additional 1 MW of power to ARC-TS by reducing ITS physical footprint and power consumption at the MACC data center.

  • Systems Resilience & Disaster Avoidance Initiative

    Sponsor: Andy Palms
    Project Managers: Michael Bennett, Janet Bullerman, Jeff Castle

    This initiative will identify and classify ITS critical core infrastructure systems, and re-architect these systems to be highly available and resilient. The goal is for systems to able to maintain their capacity and production workloads, even in the event of small-scale faults or a large-scale disaster. We will develop options to increase the resiliency of these systems and propose improvements under the guidance of ITS senior leadership after weighing the scope, risk, and costs of the alternatives. The following sub-projects are associated with this Initiative:

    • Develop and Recommend system continuity plans for critical infrastructure

    Implementations to include:

    • Critical Network Systems Resilience
    • Data Center Switches Resilience
    • Firewalls Resilience
    • Critical Middleware Resilience
    • MCommunity Resilience
    • Shibboleth Resilience
    • Uniqname Resilience
    • Active Directory Resilience

  • PeopleSoft Campus Solutions 9.2 Upgrade

    Sponsor: Jim Behm 
    Project Manager: Ann Tuttle

    Campus Solutions (CS) provides core functionality for the business processes of Recruiting and Admissions, Student Registration, Student Records, Curriculum, Academic Advising, Financial Aid, Student Financials, and Campus Community (core student and employee data). U-M must upgrade to a version of CS that will be supported for the foreseeable future to maintain business continuity for the primary customers of CS, and to remain compliant and secure in our enterprise systems.

  • Campus Wide Wifi Upgrade, Year 3

    Sponsor: Andy Palms
    Project Managers:  Leslie Williamson, Alok Vimawala

    The purpose of this project is to replace and/or enhance the Ann Arbor campus (excluding the Medical Campus) WiFi network so that there is a consistent, reliable, robust, and higher capacity WiFi network in university buildings. The project will upgrade a minimum of 15 million square feet of academic, student housing, and administrative buildings. 

  • Learning Analytics Applications and Data Services (LAADS)

    Sponsor: Sean DeMonner
    Project Manager: John Johnston

    The purpose of this project is to build a unified data source for SIS, LMS, and Caliper learning tools data. The Learning Analytics Infrastructure project is one of the key strategic initiatives the Teaching & Learning team will be investing in for FY18. The effort will entail working with the Unizin consortium to define and implement a cloud-based learning analytics platform. That platform will include 3 main components: 

    1) Unizin Data Warehouse (UDW)
    2) Learning Records Store (LRS)
    3) Visualization Service

    This platform will provide the capabilities needed to support learning analytics dashboards, academic performance alerts/monitoring, and surface actionable insights for faculty and program coordinators. This platform will also provide the foundation for us to support technology-facilitated personalized and adaptive learning as those applications evolve. 

  • Next Generation Security Architecture Phase 2

    Sponsor: Sol Bermann
    Project Manager: Greg Stathes

    Enhance U-M threat intelligence collection and mitigation; modernize firewall environment; support secure and compliant data “enclave” development; expand U-M IT security training and awareness program.

    Phase 2 of the project will:

    • Implement Endpoint Protection solution to disseminate threat intelligence in real-time.
    • Implement a Privileged Access Management system to better protect privileged accounts (system administrators, etc.)
    • Enterprise Integration solution to improve monitoring of file system integrity.TripWireExpand.
    • Continue to provide security training program for end users, developers, administrators, and security staff.

  • Enterprise Identity & Access Management Program

    Sponsor: Andrew Rosenberg, Sol Bermann
    Program Manager: Svetla Sytch
    ITS Project Managers:  Jennifer Swaney, Eric Brannon, Earnest King, Greg Stathes

    Launched in January 2017, the Enterprise Identity Access Management (EIAM) program at U-M coordinates and unites IAM efforts for all U-M campuses—Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Flint, and Michigan Medicine—to improve the technology and administrative processes that allow authorized individuals to access U-M resources. The initiative is jointly funded by the Office of the Provost and Michigan Medicine through the end of June 2018.

    By summer 2018 and through multiple projects, the EIAM Program will: 

    • Lay the foundation to set universitywide IAM priorities with a single program office and steering committee.
    • Prepare for future improvements by piloting new services and identifying universitywide requirements.
    • Deliver quick wins to improve the current state for the entire U-M community.