Dalhousie University

Campus IT in the 21st Century Dalhousie CIO Dwight Fischer discusses the Halifax institution’s IT transformation Written by: Sasha Orman Produced by: Andy Turner

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Campus IT in the 21st Century Dalhousie CIO Dwight Fischer discusses the Halifax institution’s IT transformation Written by: Sasha Orman Produced by: Andy Turner

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DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY

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he world of information technology is changing, and it’s up to IT departments to change with the times. What started with internal e-mail systems has become an expansive web of sensitive data that must be managed and cared for.

“I remember when e-mail first came out. In the first years it was the bastion of higher education,” says Dwight Fischer, CIO at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

“But over the last couple decades, not just these applications but our ERPs, research data—you need more and more storage, more and more capacity. You’ve got the 4

evolution of technology, so the technology stacks at our universities just grew and grew.”

Technology is evolving and Dalhousie University is evolving to keep pace. This means a total IT transformation to keep the university supporting its faculty and students to the fullest.

Adapting to a new model For Fischer and Dalhousie University, transforming the IT department requires rethinking exactly what IT means and what is in store for its future. As with many universities today, for Dalhousie

TECHNOLOGY

this translated to going from a fully in-house infrastructure to building partnerships with businesses that offer the modern capacity and high-tech security that suit today’s demands.

“IT has a foundation in infrastructure and capacity, and what’s happened is we can no longer keep growing and providing it the way we were. It’s too expensive, and it’s being delivered in new ways now,” says Fischer. “In Nova Scotia, fiscal realities and reduced funding in this province are causing us to rethink our model. We can’t keep adding IT on premise if we don’t have the people to support it, and we can’t keep adding it under the assumption that it’s going to be safer and more protected here than it is on servers from Microsoft or somebody else who can do it at a scale that we can’t even dream of.”

“When you see what the industry’s doing, you can either get on board with it and carve it out like we’re doing, or someone else will come in and sooner or later you’ll be marginalized to irrelevance within your organization” – Dwight Fischer, CIO w w w. d a l . c a

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Website: www.dal.ca

DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY Dalhousie’s IT transformation fittingly started with a change of its e-mail systems, looking outside its walls to replace outdated proprietary technology.

“We started looking at what it would take to put in a new e-mail and communications system for a university today. You’ve got to have capacity, it’s got to integrate seamlessly with all our mobile devices, it’s got to be protected,” says Fischer. “We compared the cost of doing it ourselves—not just doing it, but sustaining it over the next decade—and then we compared that against Google and Microsoft, who are offering it to higher ed for free. Most people think it’s a Faustian bargain, that they’ll turn around and start charging us for it. But when you look at the schools that have already gone there, they’re not thinking about e-mail anymore.

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It’s a commodity service. It’s been mastered.”

Ultimately Dalhousie chose to partner with Microsoft Office 365.

“We selected Microsoft because it was a more familiar interface for most people, plus they offered the ability to house stuff on campus or in the cloud,” says Fischer. “We’ve been very happy with the decision to go with Microsoft, because it’s more built for the large organization, but with no hardware and no application needed. We have people who administrate it and make sure it’s tied to our all our identity management system, but I don’t think about e-mail anymore.”

Changing roles for a changing industry Dalhousie University soon followed this change with a similar overhaul of its learning management system,

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C O M PA N Y N A M E

“E-mail is a commodity service.

It’s been mastered” – Dwight Fischer, CIO

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moving into the cloud. “The option was clear for us: do you want to pay for it and do it yourself, or do you want to move into a cloud-based hosted service?” says Fischer. “We took the latter, and so this is changing the IT organization. We need fewer people to manage and prop up hardware.

We need more people to start integrating these different cloud systems that are hosted in different places. We need to make them talk to one another, and leverage the data within them.”

SECTOR

This difference in personnel needs and skill sets is a becoming a pressing concern as technology evolves. Dalhousie is among those understanding that university IT departments of the future will look very different compared to departments even 10 years ago, and skills must change if these departments are going to keep up. “IT skills need to change,� says Fischer. “We need fewer hardware experts and more data analysts, fewer people monkeying with that w w w. d a l . c a

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DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY

hardware and more people helping other people figure out how to use it. That’s the shift. Some IT organizations are really struggling with that—but the fact is that the industry’s not waiting for us.

Everybody here talks like we’ve got a choice. You can assume that if you 12

want, but when you see what the industry’s doing, you can either get on board with it and carve it out like we’re doing, or someone else will come in and sooner or later you’ll be marginalized to irrelevance within your organization.”

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Narrowing your specialties A key change that has come with this technology transformation is that it is allowing Dalhousie University’s IT department to better focus its efforts. “IT is a large cost center, so we’re maturing in higher ed to be really clear about what it is we do and don’t do,” says Fischer, explaining that the school is cutting down on extraneous IT offerings like computer training and sales— both readily available elsewhere—to focus in on tackling its biggest challenges to deliver the features from which its faculty and students can benefit the most.

“We focus more on high value activities such as data management and analytics—helping with academics in the classroom, research support.

We’re spending less time doing hardware setups and configurations and upgrades,” says Fischer, noting that this has also helped Dalhousie University become a greener and more efficient institution. “IT infrastructure is very power intensive. At a time when everyone’s looking at getting points for green policies and sustainability, hosting your own data center is not exactly where you want to be.”

By working with partners like Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, Dalhousie’s IT department is able to provide the best of its own services paired with the best that technology has to offer.

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6299 South St Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3H 4R2 Tel. 1-902-494-2211 www.dal.ca