IT Commons: Strengthening Collaboration and Efficiency at UM

1. Central/Distributed Svcs at UM Kitty Bridges bridges@umich.edu

2. Environment • UM highly decentralized and decision making and authority greatly distributed • Core strength of institution is distribution of responsibility for mission • Strong central administration and strong deans • Many resources – across the institution U Michigan / IT Central Services

3. IT organization • Central: • MAIS (Administrative computing) • IT Central Services (ITCS) (Infrastructure, networking, academic computing) • Media Union (instructional technology development, media services) • Schools/colleges • MCIT (Medical Center IT) • Other Units U Michigan / IT Central Services

4. Before ITCommons • Silo’d infrastructure, applications, etc. • Multiple email servers • Multiple authentication systems and directories • Multiple help desks • Multiple AFS cells • Multiple Kerberos domains • More than one backbone…. • Highly fragmented, making life difficult for students and inter-disciplinary activities • Lack of trust in others in IT • Independence, control U Michigan / IT Central Services

5. Getting to a New Place • Centralized computing led to centralized planning and management with little or no diversity • Distributed computing led to distributed planning and management with diversity, but little or no coordination • NOW: Learning coordinated autonomy U Michigan / IT Central Services

6. Primary Goals • Manage our distributed IT structure in ways that are strategic from the center as well as the edge. • Enable experimentation, flexibility, and agility in the academic units. • Facilitate collaboration and shared capability. • In other words, strategically manage IT in ways that do not do violence to Michigan culture and in ways that play to our strengths. U Michigan / IT Central Services

7. ITCommons • Emergence • Collaboration • Opt in, opt out • Critical mass • Sourcing • Barriers to collaboration • Economic - full cost vs. margin • Staffing already in place everywhere • Cultural U Michigan / IT Central Services

8. An ‘Organizational Architecture’ framework, that illuminates opportunities to share capability… Colleges, central units, constituencies, etc. … Drivers of demand (units)… 1 2 n …have priorities, which imply… … … capabilities, some unique… …others that can be shared. These rest on a set of underlying and common… e.g.:directory services, authentication & authorization, network middleware, printing, email core infrastructure services.

9. Infrastructure & shared capability • Infrastructure • Storage services (re-aggregating, specializing) • Enterprise directory project (enterprise focus, usefulness to academic units) • Security (central coordination, unit volunteers) • Shared capability • Exchange (shared among schools and central) • Sitemaker (community support for locally developed service) U Michigan / IT Central Services

10. How This Plays • Engineering • Needs to be first, different and right • Hospitals and Health Centers • Different drivers • LSA, Small schools/colleges • Real opportunity • Admin computing • Better collaboration U Michigan / IT Central Services

11. What’s different • Create community, minimize territoriality • Support of IT colleagues • Progress on some infrastructure issues • Managing for a collaborative environment • Shifts in services are underway • Mood and collaborative behavior is substantially different U Michigan / IT Central Services