Technology Planning & Priorities Committee

April 10, 2015

Present:  Janet Scannell, Paul Thiboutot, Bev Nagel, Tommy Bonner, Fred Rogers

Absent:  Hudlin Wagner

AGENDA:

 1. Review of minutes from Feb. 20th meeting (attached)

2. Discussion of principles to make cohesive technology decisions

— the constraint triangle

— the value and cost of making departmental choices based on functionality

— the role of Google and Ellucian in our next generation solutions

3. Status report on file storage options such as COLLAB, dropbox, Google Drive (see summary attached)

Review minutes from February 20, 2015.

 Minutes from the February 20, 2015 meeting were approved.

Discussion of principles to make cohesive technology decisions:

Janet reported on several initiatives in the Telecom area.

·         Make dorm room phones optional.  There is movement to remove phones from resident halls.  Hall Directors would still have land lines, plus one per floor lounge.  Students would need to opt-in if they wanted one. Bev suggested that Janet write up a proposal, bring it to this committee for approval and then onto Tuesday Group.

·         Switchboard – the volume of calls to our main switchboard is very light and it employs 15-20 students.  Could we switch to an automated switchboard?  Cell phone numbers for students – because of FIRPA regulations campus offices don’t always have a way to contact them.  It was suggested that the Dean of Students and new Registrar get involved in this when she comes on board.

Discussion of principles:  

Carleton is facing several significant technology decisions that need to be made in the next 6 months or so.  The timing is right to develop a framework and principles that will guide and help us make these decisions in terms of fitting into an existing or emerging technology ecosystem.

The networked storage of Collab is on equipment that is aging.  Faculty, staff, and students are already using cloud solutions like Dropbox and Google Drive for ease of sharing files.

Ellucian (Colleague and Advance vendor) is offering a new CRM solution for advancement and new modules for registration and advising.  This implies a re-purchasing of current services.  Colleague was implemented almost 30 years ago.

We recently learned that our Zimbra e-mail host, Merit, will be discontinuing its email hosting service in 2.5 years.  This raises the question of whether to move towards Gmail or Microsoft 365. 

Janet led us in a brainstorming session and we discussed a handout outlining three philosophies for developing a campus framework to guide strategic technology decisions.

The document proposed the following ways to think about the choices:

1.    Mantra – you can’t have fast, cheap and good. A graph represented cheap = late and minimal. Fast = expensive and minimal.  Good = late and expensive.

2.    Constraint triangle:

a.    Community facing systems – user experience driven, highly accessible, mobile friendly.

b.    Department facing systems – technology driven, financially, efficient

c.    Core tech – Carleton password, SQL friendly.

3.    The Technology Stacks – consider aligning with one (or few) vendors to gain efficiency from using an integrated stack.  By leveraging what a vendor delivers you are also constrained to their feature set and delivery timeline.  The customer has no control over which features will get priority for the upgrade and enhancement roadmap.  A chart summarized our current infrastructure compared to current technology stacks:  Google-centric; Microsoft-centric; Ellucian-centric, and functionality-driven Carleton apps.

After a lengthy discussion of the tradeoffs and opportunities, the committee endorsed moving forward with the following:

·         Our deciding principles should be based around functionality and integration with our existing ecosystems.

·         File sharing & COLLAB storage is first priority.  Look into Box or Dropbox. Janet will update the team evaluating our file storage.  The file sharing decision will also be tied to these other upcoming decisions around e-mail and CRM.

·         CRM – based on functionality and integration the committee leaned toward SalesForce.  Our trustees and alums are using it and it’s more cost effective than the competitors we are evaluating (MS Dynamics & Ellucian Dynamics). Janet will update the team evaluating CRMs.

The task forces working on CRM and the file storage evaluation will continue their work and plan to develop recommendations before our next meeting on May 29th.

Status of file storage options:

This was discussed in the context of the agenda #2.

Janet informed the committee that Willy Lee is leaving the college.  As part of the Web Services Group, he has

handled much of our Moodle management.  In the interim, we are working out support for Moodle.

Meeting adjourned at 3:00pm

Submitted by:  Candyce Lelm