Metro's Information Technology staff has been working diligently this academic year on large ongoing and new projects to make computing at Metro even more secure and efficient.

First, IT has been developing and implementing a plan over the past 18 months to ensure that Metro State's computing resources continue to run smoothly, particularly in the event of a data disaster.

The process began in fall 2003, when IT staff met with vendors and attended workshops to discuss the risks, liabilities and user requirements of Metro's major computing systems. Through this process, IT determined that users will shortly require continuous round-the-clock access to the college's computer resources such as Web services and e-mail. In response, IT developed a risk management plan (RMP) which the college approved in July 2004.

Since then, IT has been working to implement the RMP, which includes major hardware and software enhancements to systems such as Banner, the Portal, student lab services, administrative server-based services and backup and recovery strategies. The periodic network outages that IT has scheduled over the past year are a result of this RMP work.

Once the RMP is completely implemented (anticipated in July 2005), the college's data will have multiple layers of redundancy in the event that the main system in the Administration Building is unable to operate. The disaster recovery data center will be in the CN 306 and will house strategically placed servers, large data-storage units and network electronics to maintain an immediate return to services for many of the college's critical systems. Students, faculty and staff will still be able to log into the network and applicable systems if one of the data centers is lost. A new backup system will limit down time so users can access systems such as Portal and Banner for longer hours.

College Opportunity Fund and Banner
Another important IT project continues to be the modifications to Banner in support of the College Opportunity Fund (COF), which takes effect fall semester. As the largest Colorado school on Banner, Metro State initiated and set up a consortium of 10 institutions, both private and public, and then contracted with the Banner vendor to do the programming. By managing the project ourselves, Metro saved the consortium almost $400,000 while sharing the development costs among the institutions.