The MSU IT Council met on July 1. Below are the high-level topic summaries from the meeting.
Project management
Kevin Kuss, director of IT Services Project Management Office, gave an overview of the project status reporting system. Kuss will provide regular updates of high-level technology projects at future IT Council meetings.
Campus units should also be developing project management procedures of their own.
Campus licensing agreements
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux license agreement is in place for all MSU-owned machines. MSU is seeking reimbursement from the vendor for overlapping contract payments that are covered by this campus license.
Read more about the Red Hat Enterprise Linux license.
The RFP for a Smart Net campus license has been written, but not yet released. MSU currently has 23 separate Smart Net contracts from seven different vendors that need to be consolidated.
IT Assessment
MSU Vice President and CIO Joanna Young presented on the results of the Deloitte IT Assessment. Young had previously presented on the assessment to the MSU Board of Trustees.
MSU needs to further identify how it will apply the information obtained from the assessment. Key points include a greater emphasis on planning for transformation. Technology will need to become an enabler of MSU strategy. We need to continue to eradicate technical debt and move to a model where more time is spent delivering innovation and less time is spent on resolving issues.
Office 365 update
As of June 8, no new undergraduate accounts were created in the legacy MSU mail system. In early June, more than 300 Office 365 accounts were created with minimal service issues. In July and August, existing freshmen will be migrated to Office 365. Password synchronization between MSU NetID passwords and CampusAD passwords is now also live.
Read more about the Office 365 transition.
Vendor presentations
At the July meeting, the IT Council prioritized vendor presentation topics. The schedule will include service desk tools with CA Solutions, archival solutions with ImageNow and Highland Software, data analytics with IBM, and virtualization with VMware and Microsoft.
Further details regarding dates, times, and locations of vendor presentations will be provided in emails to the IT Council and IT Exchange listservs.
About the IT Council
The MSU IT Council serves as a primary IT advisory body. Membership is open to the primary IT leader from each of the degree-granting colleges, core academic units, major academic support units, and other major business units.
The MSU community is encouraged to seek out their IT Council representative or visit the IT Council website for more information on topics of interest.
