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| Quick Notes
 | | Seema Sureshkumar |
Please welcome Seema Sureshkumar as a new Database Administrator in the Enterprise Technology Group Database Integration Team. Seema comes to SU with over 11 years of experience designing, cloning, testing, and supporting next-generation database solutions in Oracle enterprise environments at the University of Houston, where she was a DBA Lead. She has in-depth expertise in several versions of Oracle including Oracle 7, Oracle 8, Oracle 8i, Oracle 9i, Oracle 10g, Oracle 11g and Oracle Real Applications Clusters. Seema's application experience includes direct support of Blackboard, PeopleSoft (HRSA & Portal), and Hyperion. In Seema's new role she will be bolstering our support of Oracle applications with an emphasis on Oracle infrastructure and architecture. Immediately she will be gaining knowledge of our current environments pertaining to project's such as the PeopleSoft Financials upgrade, Oracle 11G migrations and the move to the GDC. Seema (x3223, ssureshk@syr.edu) will be located on the 2nd floor of the Skytop Office Building, just inside the door on the ETG side.
 | | Ray Abdella |
Ray Abdella assumed his new role as the primary contact in providing IT/Desktop support for Chancellor's Office and the Office of the Vice Chancellor. Ray came to SU in 2005 as a Help Desk Consultant as part of the Financials, Accounting, and Budget System project. In 2007 he was promoted to Computer Consultant in BFAS where he most recently supported Human Resources, Campus Planning Design and Construction and the Comptroller's group. Prior to coming to SU Ray was the Branch Manager for the local office of Computer Rentals of America for 8 years. He is a graduate of ESF and his daughter is a junior here at SU. You can contact Ray at rjabdell@syr.edu or x4363.
 | | David Harris |
David Harris is now providing leadership and management to the ITS Business Office and its support for the ITS organization. David came to the position October 1, after serving for ten years as a Senior Project Manager and Process Analyst with the Enterprise Process Support (EPS) unit. Prior to coming to Syracuse University, David was the Vice President, Business Systems for Planned Parenthood of the Rochester/Syracuse Region, Inc. He also served as Director of Marketing at Community-General Hospital. His experience includes senior level non-profit administration, health systems planning, marketing, work redesign, business reorganization, and consulting. David also serves as President of the Board of Directors for Liberty Resources Inc. and is a member of the National Ski Patrol. David earned his Masters degree in Urban Planning in the School of Architecture and Environmental Design at SUNY at Buffalo. He holds a Bachelors degree in Environmental Design and Planning from the School of Architecture at SUNY at Buffalo. David can be contacted at x2975 and daharr02@syr.edu. |
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IT Professional Development
Staff on the cutting edge
Lauri Francis, Mike Roy and Marcello Prattico attended the Hannon Hill 2011 Cascade Server User Conference in Atlanta on September 19 and 20. On September 21, Colleen Van Camp co-chaired the Third Annual Business Continuity Symposium in Rochester, NY. The Symposium is put on by the Eastern Great Lakes Association of Contingency Planners (EGLACP), of which Colleen is the Program Director. The highlight of the full-day event was a crisis management table top exercise facilitated by Jim Satterfield, co-founder and CEO of Firestorm, a recognized leader in business continuity, vulnerability analysis, risk mitigation and crisis management. The remainder of the presentations included Emergency Notification Systems, Homeland Security/Emergency Management Overview, and The Advantages of Desktop Virtualization and its impact on DR/BC. Jim Pampinella, Julie Hughes, Melissa Gwilt and Ron Kurdziel attended the 17th Annual 2011 PINNACLE Users Conference, September 25 - 28 in Rochester, NY. Fifty workshops were available to the more than 200 attendees, which ranged from How-Tos and best practices, to PINNACLE updates and the future trends of IT&T management. Attendees included IT professionals ranging from analysts to department managers and directors across several industry sectors, including higher education, government, retail, healthcare, and Fortune 1000 businesses. Chris Croad attended the first annual DerbyCon security convention in Louisville, Kentucky from September 30 - October 2. DerbyCon brought together security professionals and white hat "hackers" in a collaborative environment to improve their information security "skillz" and knowledge. DerbyCon was a great success, with over a thousand participants, and top rate speakers like Kevin Mitnick, HD Moore and the crew from PaulDotCom Security Weekly. Johnny Long (security rockstar, author and founder of Hackers for Charity), stated in the closing ceremonies how DefCon (a much larger convention) has always been the single largest source for donations to HFC, but DerbyCon blew it out of the water this year, raising over $13,000 from its ~1000 attendees. Chris hopes to use information he gained from talks dealing with social engineering, physical security, and engaging college students in InfoSec to improve SU's overall InfoSec program and learning environment.
Training & Education
After almost a year of classes and coursework, Trudi Porter completed the training in June 2011, earning her Certified Manager (CM) designation. Facilitated here at SU by Mickey Lord and Jennifer Rosas of the Office of Human Resources, CM training is a product of The Institute of Certified Professional Managers (ICPM), recognized worldwide for its management development and certification expertise. The CM Certification is intended for current and prospective managers, leaders, and supervisors working in any field at any level. Successful completion of the CM certification is a reliable indicator of managerial competency and leadership potential.
Benson Poikayil has achieved his Global Information Assurance Certification (GIAC) as a Certified Incident Handler (GCIH) from the SANS Institute. This certification signifies that Benson has focused knowledge in the areas of Hacker Techniques, Exploits and Incident Handling, and has the knowledge, skills, and abilities to manage incidents; to understand common attack techniques and tools; and to defend against and/or respond to such attacks when they occur. Congratulations to Benson on achieving this challenging certification!
Publications
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Make sure your mobile devices stay connected to AirOrangeX
Install new SSL certificates by October 31
The security certificates for the AirOrangeX wireless network will expire soon, and will be turned off on October 31, 2011. New certificates have been available since August, and any client device which has run AirOrangeHelp since then should have had the new certificates installed.
As of late September, about 85% of all students and about 65% of all employees have installed the new certificates, but only installations on computers can be detected. Installations cannot be detected on handhelds (including iOS), which means that the daily system warnings to install new certificates will not be sent to handheld devices. If users fail to install certificates on their devices by 10/30/11 they will be unable to connect to the AirOrangeX wireless network.
IT support staff across campus are asked to encourage their users to run AirOrangeHelp on their devices before October 31, 2011 to install the new certificates. To install the new SSL certificates, users should connect their devices to the AirOrangeHelp wireless network, point their browser to http://airorangehelp.syr.edu, and follow the directions.
Apple iOS devices, including iPhones, iPods (including touch) and iPads may experience problems if an existing configuration profile needs to be removed. Apple iOS uses two different profile techniques that are not compatible. It is best to remove all AirOrange profiles in Settings>General>Profiles and then open http://airorangehelp.syr.edu on the browser, and follow the directions to run the AirOrangeHelp configuration tool. If that fails, reset network settings under Settings>General>Reset; see instructions on AirOrangeHelp, or contact the ITS Service Center at (315) 443-2677 or help@syr.edu for assistance.
Please contact Peter Morrissey (x3534 or ppmorris@syr.edu) with any questions.
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Tech Updates
Keeping current with software, systems, issues and devices
Earlier this year, ITS's Information Security department (in cooperation with the TLC) enacted a security standard that required all SU-owned laptops to have their entire hard drives encrypted to protect SU's data in the event of loss or theft of the laptop. Since then, over 800 SU-owned laptop computers have had their hard disks encrypted using Checkpoint™ Full Disc Encryption (FDE) software which was acquired by ITS for this purpose.
The Exchange 2010 migration started last month and is going very well. As expected a small number of oddities cropped up, and ITS's Core Infrastructure Services (CIS) team developed remediation approaches. The migration is on track to complete by the end of October. Please send any questions and feedback about the migration to Eric Sedore at essedore@syr.edu.
The Syracuse University Mobile App has been upgraded to be compatible with iOS 5, and the new version is available in the App Store. The Android version is available now in the Android Market. Work continues on the Blackberry version, including some performance tweaks and navigating the process to submit the application to their market place.
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ITS Connected Clinics Get Off the Ground
Service Center staff starts student outreach
 | | She's got backup! |
October 3 saw the launch of a new outreach program by the ITS Service Centers when their first Connected Clinic was held in the Shaw Dining Center. Designed to raise students' awareness of and knowledge about a variety of computing issues and services, the clinics are conducted by a team comprised of student consultants and ITS professional staff. Clinics are held on a rotating schedule, primarily in the residence dining centers with relatively high numbers of first year students.
"Our goal is to help students get the most out of their computing experience here at SU," said Jon Wright, Support Analyst, who organized the program. "We're taking a light-hearted yet concerned approach that will not only attract attention but get students interested and engaged."
Stepping off from the Service Center's popular "Got Backup?" video, the first clinic program invited students to attempt to back up on a tricycle, and then made the pitch about the importance of backing up data. Future programs will deal with a wide variety of topics, including SU's Expressions blogging service.
For more information, contact Jon Wright at jowright@syr.edu or x3041.
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IT Out and About
Connecting with the campus and beyond
 | | Lauri Francis brings home a medal from the Cayuga Lake Triathlon |
Congrats to Lauri Francis of the Arts & Sciences Computing Services Group, who was in three Triathlons this year: the Escape from Fort Desoto Triathlon held April 16 in St Petersburg, FL; the Cayuga Lake Triathlon on August 7, in Trumansburg, NY, where she took a third place medal in her age group with a time of 1:40:37, and the Finger Lakes Triathlon September 11 in Canandaigua NY, her first time an Olympic-length event, where she earned second place medal in her age group with a time of 3:14:01.
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New voice mail system coming to SU
CallXpress� from AVST has new features and enables unified communications
ITS will soon install the AVST CallXpress� system to replace SU's "end-of-life" Octel Voice Mail system. The new CallXpress system will not only provide voice mail services, it will set the stage for other unified communication services in the future. While a specific date for the conversion has not been set, tentatively it will occur sometime in December, 2011.
The Octel system was installed in 1998 and currently has about 4,000 mailboxes defined. While it has been exceptionally reliable, with no system outages during its 13 years of operation, Avaya, Octel's manufacturer, stopped manufacturing and selling the system in July 2006 and stopped maintaining the system last July. While this is not of immediate concern because SU's system is supported by a third-party provider independent of Avaya, it means there will be no future enhancements for the Octel system; it will provide only basic voice mail services.
SU has contracted with Newcastle Communications to do the installation and ongoing maintenance and support for CallXpress. The system will be configured with four Windows servers that will reside in the Green Data Center and Machinery Hall Data Center. The initial focus will be replacing Octel's basic voice mail services, followed by implementing unified messaging which can notify (and perhaps deliver) voice mail messages via Microsoft Exchange. Unified messaging is designed to provide users the same convenient access to voice messages whether they are at their desk, calling in over a telephone or checking their email/voice messages on their smartphone. The final configuration and integration details are being worked out by ITS's implementation team. The mailbox price charged to user departments for CallXpress will be the same as it is for Octel.
More details will be made available as the conversion date grows near, including instructions for setting up individual mailboxes and for department administrative support staff.
If you have questions about the conversion, or want more information, contact Ron Kurdziel (x9282 or kurdziel@syr.edu). |
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ITidbits
Facts and figures about IT @ SU
The Exchange 2010 migration process is averaging about 5 million messages and about 450-500GB of mail per day. When complete it's expected that the process will have moved roughly 125 million mailbox items (messages, appointments and tasks).
The new SU Mobile app currently has 1,319 unique iOS users and 247 unique Android users.
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Thank you for your support!
The ITS Service Center provides essential support to students
Student technicians stand behind the desk, ready for whatever comes through the open glass doors. Video screens, posters on internet safety and tips for keeping data safe plaster the walls. The walk-in ITS Service Center off the Milton Atrium in the Center for Science and Technology, is a calming force during any stressful student technology malfunction. Student technicians are on hand to help their fellow classmates with computer, tablet or cell phone questions.
The service center is more than a repair shop. It's a lifeline for freshmen taking their first steps to get connected with college life, and last minute savior for crashed hard drives and seemingly lost final papers. Jon Wright, an ITS Support Analyst , trains the student technicians and jumps behind the counter himself when needed. With almost 15 years on the job, Wright has seen the changes not only in technology but the service center itself.
"We're out in the front more," says Wright. "Technology changes, needs change, so the Service Center support changes, too."
"Sometimes students do things that, in our minds, are questionable," says Wright with a smile. "But it's fun, we help people and they sometimes say we saved their lives." The most common issues with devices students bring to the Service Center are wireless network connectivity, hooking up email on tablets or smart phones, and hard drive crashes, according to Wright.
The Service Center at CST is open from 10:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday, with reduced hours on weekends (see the ITS Support Services web page for details). Student support is also provided in the Goldstein Student Center on South Campus by appointment. The Service Center does a fair amount of outreach work. From their Got Backup? Connected Clinics to password safety videos, the Center extends into residence halls and across campus to educate students.
Student technicians typically work two-hour shifts, with each customer transaction taking about 15 minutes. Sometimes repairs require more time, especially those related to hard drive or virus issues, and the service center will keep the laptop overnight. These computers are fixed by the same student technicians, who do a complete tune up and fix the problems.
"I would say 90% of the time, whether on the counter or with computers left with us, we can get it fixed," said Shefali Haldar, a sophomore student technician at the center. Students with computers that the Service Center can't fix are given advice and assistance contacting other resources.
The beginning of the semester and finals week usually bring in the biggest crowds, the most stress and the worst tension. "Those are kind of psycho moments," said Shefali. "Students come in kind of harried and we try to destressify them."
Vandana Raj, a graduate student working in the center since April, said her favorite moment was during finals week. "It was 10 minutes before closing and a girl came in in tears. Her computer had crashed and she couldn't continue," said Raj. "So we stayed open until 10:45 to get her going."
Ultimately, that focus on satisfying customers is what the Service Center is all about. They are a small group of dedicated student technicians, solving unexpected problems so the students they support can keep going.
According to Stephanie, a student who had email problems, "the Support Center gave me a chance to breathe and finally be relieved."
by Dania Souid
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IT Connections is published monthly by Information Technology and Services at Syracuse University. Please submit story ideas and news items to Chris Finkle.
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