Re: From Decentralized to Centralized

[Joel Rosenblatt <joel () COLUMBIA EDU>]

I don't disagree - it is a way to save money.  We centralized our decentralized, centralized IT organization about 5 
years ago (We used to have a AcIS and AIS
group - academic/administrative) - now we have a CUIT group - in the process, lots of things broke and, in my opinion, 
are still broken, most things are about
the same and some things work a little better.  We still have an IT department in every school, college and many 
departments - the CUIT organization runs the
university infrastructure (network, mail, web, payroll, student services, help desk, security, etc.) but the 
departments run their local machines and servers
(if they have them) and provide local support. (Side note, I have been here long enough to have gone through the 
centralized, decentralized, centralized
hamster wheel of pain more than once)

With the decentralized funding model that we work with, it would be very hard or impossible to really centralize IT - 
the bigger problem would be to change the
way that things are funded - it is really hard to tell a school that brings in all of it's own funds that they cannot 
do IT the way they want.

I don't think that our school should be the role model - we have over a 250 year history of being "a little different" 
:-)

These are mine, and only mine, very skewed opinions.

My 2 cents

Joel Rosenblatt

Joel Rosenblatt, Manager Network & Computer Security
Columbia Information Security Office (CISO)
Columbia University, 612 W 115th Street, NY, NY 10025 / 212 854 3033
http://www.columbia.edu/~joel




--On Thursday, March 19, 2009 10:18 AM -0500 "Ness, Carl J" <carl-ness () uiowa edu> wrote:

> I hate to say it, but this might become a reality for more campuses that are trying to get budgets under control. 
> Duplicated services are going to be looked
> down upon, and people that are very high up aren't going to care about specialized support verses the central IT 
> organization. If a university has a large
> (effective) central helpdesk, and 4 other little ones supporting this college or that college, which do you think will 
> survive a nasty round of budget cuts?
>
> I know several colleagues at other schools that have been asked to justify why a specific unit or college is running 
> its own *insert system here* verses
> using the centralized service. Some of them have already lost the battle to keep their own.
>
> This is a dangerous time to be involved in kingdom building...
>
> Carl
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Joel 
> Rosenblatt
> Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009 9:25 AM
> To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
> Subject: Re: [SECURITY] From Decentralized to Centralized
>
> This should be a good one :-) I can't wait to hear this discussion.
>
> Sorry, I couldn't resist :-)
>
> Joel
>
> --On Thursday, March 19, 2009 10:11 AM -0400 "Sarazen, Daniel" <dsarazen () UMASSP EDU> wrote:
>
> > Hi All,
> >
> >
> >
> > I'm wondering if anybody out there has been involved with a project to
> > centralize previously decentralized IT functions/departments and whether
> > you could share you planning and any post-mortem that you may have
> > available.
> >
> >
> >
> > Many Thanks,
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > :: Daniel Sarazen, Information Technology Auditor
> > :: University Internal Audit
> > :: University of Massachusetts President's Office
> >
> > :: 508-856-2443
> >
> > :: 781-724-3377 Cell
> > :: 508-856-8824 Fax
> > :: Dsarazen () umassp edu
> >
> >
> > University of Massachusetts : 333 South St. : Suite 450 : Shrewsbury, MA
> > 01545 : www.massachusetts.edu <http://www.massachusetts.edu/>
>
>
>
> Joel Rosenblatt, Manager Network & Computer Security
> Columbia Information Security Office (CISO)
> Columbia University, 612 W 115th Street, NY, NY 10025 / 212 854 3033
> http://www.columbia.edu/~joel



Joel Rosenblatt, Manager Network & Computer Security
Columbia Information Security Office (CISO)
Columbia University, 612 W 115th Street, NY, NY 10025 / 212 854 3033
http://www.columbia.edu/~joel