Support world-class research and teaching using frictionless interfaces to data and computation.
The following accomplishments represent how departments within Information and Technology Services (ITS) successfully met this pivotal 'Area of Focus.' Accomplishments listed may appear in more than one area of focus.
Click on an ITS department title to view all their accomplishments for fiscal year 2025 (FY25).
Procurement Updates
ITS collaborated with ECRT, Central Procurement Services, and the OGC to update procurement processes so that digital products and services meet accessibility requirements. These updates revise contract language, enhance user resources, and embed accessibility priorities into U-M's procurement strategy. ITS aligns its internal procedures to support long-term success and ensure compliance in acquiring accessible technologies.
Research and Development
ITS focused its research and development efforts on emerging solutions for digital documents and media formats. This proactive approach prepares us to adopt state-of-the-art technologies to enhance accessibility further. By staying current with these advancements, we remain well-positioned to continuously improve accessibility solutions at U-M.
System Operations
ITS Administration & Operations
The ITS System & Operations teams delivered several high-impact infrastructure and innovation milestones. The Server Virtualization team deployed a redundant virtual cluster within the Virtualization Service, empowering the Networking team to monitor U-M Net campus network more nimbly and comprehensively. The Virtual Desktop Infrastructure team built and launched a FIPS-compliant MiDesktop cluster for the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, ensuring sensitive data is protected with NIST-approved cryptographic standards. And the Cloud Services team collaborated with Google’s Rapid Innovation group, Nerdery, and Ross School of Business professors to pilot a Virtual Teaching Assistant: an AI chatbot powered by Google’s Gemini, deployed via Terraform, secured with new domain and certificate management, and balanced through a cross-project load balancer. This innovative service — set to expand to 9,000 students across 72 courses and 26 institutions over the next two years — demonstrates ITS’s commitment to leveraging cutting-edge cloud and AI technologies to enhance teaching and learning.
System Operations Storage Team
ITS Administration & Operations
The ITS System Operations Storage team capped off FY25 by completing a landmark migration of over 5 petabytes of data — including more than 700 file shares — from legacy Isilon arrays to the high-performance VAST platform, a painstaking effort carried out during nights, weekends, and early mornings since October 2023 and finalized in March 2025. In February 2025, the team also rolled out MiBackup 2.0, combining on-premises disk arrays for rapid, reliable backups with Amazon Cloud Storage for cost-effective long-term retention — significantly enhancing the university’s data resilience, performance, and scalability.
Finance Accomplishments
ITS Administration & Operations
With a $159 million budget, the ITS Finance department helped launch AI capabilities through financial modeling, establishing billing procedures for ITS with this innovative technology. The team created a TeamDynamix financial billing portal for ITS Recharge Rates, which accounted for approximately $31 million in FY25 billings. They also managed financial aspects for major incidents and future planning needs. In FY25, the Finance team also saw the completion of several major projects, including the ARC Research Computing Support & Data Center Upgrade project: a 7 year, $30 million capital project; and the Digital Asset Management Project: a 2 year, $1 million capital project. These projects are being wrapped in the FY25 budget, accounting for some of the $157 million in actual costs, $2 million better than the budget.
Research Excellence, Cutting-Edge Infrastructure
ITS Academic Research Computing (ARC)
ARC made significant upgrades in GPUs and hardware in FY2025, constituting the highest performance improvements in the unit’s entire history. Comprising of startup expenditures, record-breaking investments, and faculty awards, this expansion of ARC services provides necessary infrastructure to a wide variety of research initiatives and underscores ARC's role as a central hub of support and collaboration across campus.
As a notable example, U-M faculty Venkat Raman (Aerospace Engineering), Alex Gorodetsky (Aerospace Engineering), and Aaron Towne (Mechanical Engineering) received a $2M award from the Department of Defense to develop an AI-driven scientific computing resource. As foundational components in machine learning and AI technologies, this new computing resource will rely heavily on GPUs to enable faster, more highly detailed computer simulations to solve complex physics problems. Although this project targets, specifically, the field of hypersonic flight, it represents an overall increase in research capability and opens the door to future, interdisciplinary applications.
ARC Research Purchased Hardware (ARPH)
ITS Academic Research Computing (ARC)
Faculty Owned Equipment (FOE) underwent a service refresh, which included a name change: ARC Research Purchased Hardware (ARPH)–reflecting an improved support for systems external to ARC, purchased by researchers for specific needs.
To offer greater flexibility and value to users, ARC launched two distinct integration options for adding hardware to ARC’s high-performance computing clusters:
- Condo model: research-purchased hardware is exclusively available to the researcher, offering greater customization for performance and storage.
- Timeshare model: research-purchased hardware becomes part of an existing shared pool with shared accessibility, offering burst capacity, better protection against hardware failures, and the opportunity to receive HPC credit.
Turbo Upgrade
ITS Academic Research Computing (ARC)
Turbo also underwent a major refresh this year, pivoting from slow, mechanical hard drives to the faster and more reliable Flash memory. Flash provides a greater performance while also using less energy and lower failure rates. Because of this upgrade, Turbo is now over 14 petabytes in size and regularly reaches speeds of over 10 gigabytes per second, going as high as 25 gigabytes per second while in real use — that’s fast enough to download a high quality version of the recent season of Severance in one second! This data transfer rate accounts for as much as half of the university’s main internet traffic!
Data Den Doubles in Capacity
ITS Academic Research Computing (ARC)
Data Den now has over 25,000 terabytes of capacity, corresponding to ARC’s strategic plan to support over 100,000 terabytes by 2030. This cost increase in data storage effectively supports university policies, such as the standards for research data stewardship (SPG 303.06), as well as external agency requirements—all while reducing cost and overall environmental impact.
The 4,548+ tapes in these two secure data centers represent 2,712 miles of tape — that’s enough tape to cover the distance between Ann Arbor and the Amazon Rainforest and enough storage space to house more data than the Library of Congress!
Responsible, Secure Management of Human Genomic Data
ITS Academic Research Computing (ARC)
Starting in January 2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced an update regarding data management and access practices of human genomic data, introducing changes focusing on modernizing security standards and aligning with frameworks set forth by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Currently, the Secure Enclave Services, a virtual server environment operated by ARC, is the only service across campus that meets these updated requirements, providing U-M researchers who work with genomic datasets with high-performance, secure, and flexible computing environments. To further support researchers and data security, ITS seeks to expand campus offerings that meet security requirements for other sensitive data classifications, such as Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) from the U.S. Department of Defense.
/scratch Upgraded and Expanded
ITS Academic Research Computing (ARC)
Great Lakes /scratch, a directory designated for temporary data storage, was upgraded to a faster controller and expanded to 2.4 petabytes, that’s more storage than 322 million GameBoy cartridges. These changes have not only enhanced data protection, but have also allowed for greater efficiency in managing computing resources and workloads.
UMRCP
ITS Academic Research Computing (ARC)
The U-M Research Computing Package is a comprehensive suite of resources, offering high-performance computing hours, secure enclave services, replicated storage, and extensive archive capacity at no cost to members of the U-M community. Designed to meet the diverse needs of researchers, instructors, student teams, including Michigan Medicine, this package demonstrates ARC's dedication to nurturing an innovative research community.
Research Administration Advancements
ITS Enterprise Application Services
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Framework Upgrades: Upgraded two critical systems to support enhanced research capabilities.
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AI for Awards: Conceived and implemented AI application for award processing, reducing direct data entry and related staff time for ORSP.
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eResearch Replacement Systems Recommendation Project: The current eResearch platform is being phased out by the vendor by 2031. In the planning phase we are exploring various strategic options to develop a roadmap that allows for a smooth transition with minimal disruption.
Launching Higher Ed’s First Mobile AI App
Less than a year after introducing U-M’s custom set of AI tools, the first of its kind in higher education, the Emerging Technology team set their sights on the next milestone: an AI mobile app provided to the campus community at no cost.
Go Blue, the powerful mobile AI app, was launched in February 2025. Providing real-time, U-M specific information such as dining hall menus, bus schedules, and fun facts, Go Blue enhances life on the Ann Arbor campus for students, faculty, and staff, all while providing simultaneous access to OpenAI’s GPT4 model.
The first release of Go Blue is a great starting point in exploring what we can build at U-M. As the Emerging Technology team continues to add data sources and functionality to the app, it will become an even better campus companion.
Help us shape the future of AI at U-M by joining the Go Blue Beta Testing Team