Project: UCSB Campus Web Middleware/Portal Services Project
Sponsors: DECAF Committee of the ITPG with membership from Student Affairs, IS&C, IC, College of Letters and Science, Graduate Division, Housing, Communication Services, others
Summary
The UCSB Campus community is investing significantly in the development and implementation of complex Information Technology Systems, with self-service, Web browser based interfaces to perform increasingly complex transactions with UCSB. As the complexity and importance of these systems increases, so does the need to secure, organize, optimize and personalize the interfaces to the systems which ultimately perform the transactions. With limited Information Technology staff on campus, and the importance of correctly leveraging new technologies in this area, it is expeditious to centralize these functions.
This proposal identifies a subset of the overall structure needed to implement a campus Web Services that can be used by all, and maintained consistently and effectively as a Campus Utility. Specifically, software applications and real time data interfaces that can be used by any authorized campus web programmer, or by a web portal engine to pull and push data for presentation on the WWW. In addition, an application server with portal engine software will allow this information to be aggregated in multiple view channels on a single page, that can be customized or personalized by the service provider or by the individual user depending upon security authorization.
Many higher education vendors and commercial eBusiness vendors have software solutions currently available that can be integrated within the UCSB environment. Alternatively, these types of solutions can be built by internal technical staff. A similar environment has been developed over the past 5 years by UCLA. UCSB is significantly behind the technology curve with respect to providing these solutions for the campus. To bring about the technological improvements needed to support many of the applications mentioned above, and that meets the campus’s responsibility to protect the privacy and security of student and campus resources, significant, sustained investment is needed. Campus requirements must be debated, compiled, organize and prioritized, and vendor proposals solicited. It is anticipated that these efforts will be coordinated by the Project Lead, who will coordinate appropriate campus committees, develop plans and specifications, and interface with system vendors as needed. If fully funded this project could be completed within one year. With the internal development approach, a 5 year timeline is more likely.
How This Project Supports the Academic Mission
Growing numbers of faculty are using online resources to manage course content. The Office of the Registrar is also using online resources to register students, provide on-line access to student and course information, and provide information to faculty on course enrollment. Secure, coordinated management of these online resources is now essential to the academic mission. Without a centralized utility set as described above, each College or Division has funded and implemented duplicated web based user access solutions. This leads to an unnecessarily repetitive and confusing user account management problem for every College, Division, or Department and ultimately to a vulnerable set of systems and data, which we are bound by law to protect.
Funding Source
Each College, Division, Department is currently funding their own systems, with on-line interfaces, which should continue. Centralized campus IT security structures, middleware, data interfaces, and portal engines do not have any current funding.
Costs
Middleware & Data Services:
- $500,000 software
- $100,000 annually software maintenance
- $210,000.00 hardware
Matching Opportunities
The systems managers in the DECAF committee can provide technical consulting and integration work with the systems they are responsible for as needed.
IS&C will continue to provide sporadic support from the same group of individuals who originally implemented the directory and developed the data cleaning and feeding programs that support it. It is planned, however, that this group focuses their attention on developing the authorization service described in a companion proposal. (Each of these people also has responsibility for certain other components of the mainframe, Unix, NT and network services supported by IS&C.) The hardware and software required to support the directory can be duplicated and maintained by IS&C, if additional resources are provided.
Staff Support Required
Middleware, Data Interfaces, Portal Engines, Application Server:
- 3 FTE Development Staff for one year
- Year 2 and beyond: 2 FTE for production maintenance and development support
Existing Resources to Be Used
The existing experience and expertise of DECAF system administrators can be used in this implementation. The existing IS&C system administration resources can be used to manage a duplicate environment to the existing LDAP hardware environment.
Project Timeline
Project #1, LDAP is in production. Project #2 Security Services needs to be in production within the next 6-12 months. Project #3 should begin as soon as the security services are in place, and will have a duration of approximately 1 year if fully funded, and 5 years if internally developed.
Life Cycle of Result
The proposed structure will be the basis for achieving the New Business Architecture 2010, and will be closely coordinated with the Office of the President NBA 2010 vision and the UC Task Force on the Future Delivery of Student Services.
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