The University of Texas at Austin

Current ITS Projects

Current Projects

  • Centralized Authentication System Implementation
    • 4/26/2013 - Testing is in progress in the Qual environment. Testing in the Prod environment will begin shortly. The UTLogin web page has been updated with relevant information for the new service. Additional documentation for early adopters is under development.
  • Canvas Learning Management System Evaluation
    • 5/10/2013 - The assessment phase of the project is nearing completion. The feedback gathered from faculty, students and technical staff will be compiled and presented to the project steering committee at the June meeting.

      Additionally, preparations for Canvas use for Summer 2013 semester continue. If you are interested in using Canvas for your course, please send your course name, unique number and approximate number of students to canvas@utlists.utexas.edu.
  • Group Email Upgrade
    • 3/28/2013 - User Acceptance Testing has been successfully completed for the Urgent Email System (Phase 1 of the Group Email Upgrade project). Phase 1 of the project is on schedule for an estimated 4/17/13 go-live date.

      Work continues on Phase 2 of the project (Regroup). The project is scheduled to be ready for production deployment on 9/17/13. The customer steering committee has recommended a 10/1/13 go-live date to accommodate beginning of semester duties on campus.
  • Virtual Desktops (vDesk) for Computer Labs on Campus
    • 4/3/2013 - vDesk services will cease operation as a campus-cooperative after the current semester on May 15th, 2013.

      Aggregating this type of service, namely disk i/o limitations for several hundred concurrent sessions from a common SAN proved problematic. Industry has offered more scalable and affordable solutions and various CSUs will continue to offer various next generation implementations of this service.

      If you are interested in this type of service for your CSU, please contact a CSU that will continue to run this type of service for insight/options:
      • McCombs School of Business: David Burns
      • College of Communication: Charles Soto
      • Cockrell School of Engineering: Bob Gloyd
  • UT Web Infrastructure Project
    • 5/10/2013 - Sense Corp, a technology design and implementation firm, was engaged to assist with the development of the UT Web high-level design. The proposed high-level design:
      • Incorporates the requirements gathered from the campus community (e.g., more self-service capabilities).
      • Addresses challenges with current hosting environment (e.g., retirement of PHP safe-mode).
      • Leverages existing University technology investments where appropriate (e.g., UT-V).
      • Is consistent with technological direction of University (e.g., allows for future expansion to hosted cloud service offering).

      The high-level design recommended three service offerings to meet the diverse needs of the UT Web community.
      • Managed CMS environments such as Drupal and WordPress for users in need of basic Web publishing.
      • Shared Virtual Hosting for users who need a more customized CMS installation or non-CMS Web applications.
      • Dedicated Web Servers (both physical and VMs through the UT-V service) will continue to be available for solutions that require a dedicated server.

      • The proposed high-level design and recommended service offerings were presented at the March 21, 2013 project steering committee meeting and unanimously endorsed.

        Next Steps:
        • Sense Corp and the UT project team have begun development of the detailed design, which will include an implementation plan for the deployment of the architecture proposed.
        • The detailed design and implementation plan will be presented at the May project steering committee meeting.
        • Explore option of building a Web hosting infrastructure in the public cloud for limited initial trial and potential future expansion.
        • Begin migration of existing Web sites this summer.
    • Identity & Access Management Strategy Project
      • 1/29/13 - The Customer Steering Committee is reviewing the results of the IAM Strategy consulting engagement and is preparing its recommendations for the IAM Roadmap.
    • Voice over Internet Protocol
      • 5/7/2013 - Wave 1 of the project is underway. Surveys of the first buildings began last week. Each building will go through a process including surveying, remediation, and deployment. Wave 1 is targeted for completion in September 2013; with each subsequent wave scheduled to take roughly six months. Determination of the buildings planned for waves 2 – 4 is in process and will be published by the end of the month. For an updated status of building deployment, visit the project wiki: https://wikis.utexas.edu/display/itsnt/VoIP+Project.
  • Details of FY 2011-12 Projects

    Detailed timelines for the projects for each ITS department are provided below.

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