Ubiquitous Secure Document Storage and Sharing: A Case Study

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Ubiquitous Secure Document Storage and Sharing
A Case Study
EDUCAUSE Live!March 27, 2007

• Bruce Maas, Interim CIO
• Cheryl Ellsworth, Systems Integration Manager

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Overview

• The environment
• Incorporating system to meet objectives
• The PantherFile environment
• Applied uses

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UWM at a Glance
Student Population 27,840 Undergraduates
23,640 Masters 3,200 Doctoral
1,000 Faculty and Staff 3,360 Schools and
Colleges 12 Undergraduate programs 155 Masters
programs 49 PhD programs 20
Milwaukee
UWM Campus
93 acres
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The Campus Context

• Research Growth Initiative
• Student Access to Success
• Expanding campus footprint
• Part-time, mobile non-resident students

Collaboration collaborative tools are
imperative!
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Wise Use of Technology Approach

• Cost-savings through standardization
• Project collaboration between centralized
  decentralized IT
• Embracing shared governance
• Eliminating haves vs. have-nots
• Consistent user experience
• Simplification of IT acquisition, support
  maintenance

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Core Service Teams

• Major IT initiatives led by most qualified person
• Faculty, student, functional technical staff
  representation
• Goal to make enterprise services amenable to 80
  of campus users
• Commitment to values civility

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IT Goal Facilitate Collaboration

• File document storage (Xythos)
• Web content management system (Paperthin
  Commonspot)
• Mail calendar suite (Zimbra)
• Deploy "loosely coupled" applications rather than
  monolithic enterprise solutions

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Objectives

• Cost-effective and secure
• Easy non-technical to use, flexible
• Available both on and off campus
• Adaptable to changing campus computer environment
  user needs
• Allows units to retire LAN storage

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Users in control of

• What is shared with campus colleagues
• What is shared with outside partner colleagues
• Locks, logging, sharing, versioning, and tickets
• Read, write, delete, permissions

Woo-hoo for control freaks!
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Institutional Benefits

• Security
• Scalability
• Reliability
• More effective deployment of storage solutions
  and staffing
• Business process improvement
• Reduction in strain on e-mail system
• Cost-savings for printing mailing

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User Community Benefits

• Collaboration on off campus
• Security
• Accessibility
• Flexibility

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Facts

• Unlimited licenses (UW System license)
• 11,500 users w/650 GB storage space
• 874,430 files
• 1 GB faculty/staff quota
• 250 MB student quota
• 25 GB largest faculty allotment

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Environment

• Redundancy, performance expandability
• Load balancing ability to swap servers
• 3 SUN Web servers
• SUN QFS meta directory with failover
• Open LDAP
• Oracle database server with hot spare
• 2.8TB storage on Infortrend EonStor JBOD

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Departmental Group Shares

• Used with Xythos drive software
• Supported by LAN administrators
• Benefits
• ? Reduce costs - LAN storage replacement
• ? Improve department efficiency
• ? Enhance campus file-sharing

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Business Process Improvement

• Office of Charter Schools
  Managing compliance documentation
• UWM Libraries-Amer. Geog. Society
  Supplying GIS
  data
• UWM Search Committees
  Processing 100s of applications

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Research and Collaboration

• College of Nursing
  Sharing reports with colleagues
• Lubar School of Business Worldwide research
  collaboration
• UWM Testing Center
  Data
  accessibility

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Teaching and Learning

• Student Accessibility Center Delivery of course
  materials for students who are visually or
  physically impaired or need assistance with
  written word
• Peck School of the Arts Dance program
  videos

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Remote Access

• College of Engineering Magazine
  design
• University Relations
  Working from remote location
• Graduate School students Working
  from multiple locations

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Recognition
InfoWorld 100 Award
For incorporation of a secure enterprise content
storage collaboration solution
Xythos Innovator Award
For delivering services to students with
disabilities

• Bruce Maas, bmaas_at_uwm.edu
• Cheryl Ellsworth, elsworth_at_uwm.edu