ITANA Meeting - 28 October 2010

---------------
Attending
Jim Phelps, University of Wisconsin-Madison (chair)
Marina Arseniev, University of California, Irvine
Ron Thielen, University of Chicago
Scott Fullerton, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Eric Gauthier, Boston University
Keith Hazelton, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Steve Olshansky, Internet2
Ann West, Internet2 / Pennsylvania State University
Ann Kitalong-Will, Internet2 (scribe)

---------------
Action Items

(AI) - Marina - will send Jim the write-up of her notes from the ITANA session at Educause, and the names of people who were on the sign-up list.

(AI) - Jim - will ask a few people to draft a statement about possibly tying in regional F2F meetings to Committee for Institutional Cooperation (CIC) events to share with the list.

---------------
Educause Update

There were about 11-12 people taking part in the ITANA discussion group at Educause, ranged from U.S. universities and some from abroad.

Hot Topics Discussed:

• Continuing issues with IDM, access control
• Disaster recovery, in the context of recovering all layers of the stack (viewed as an EA problem)
• Centralized document imaging and lcr-ing solutions. (not tied specifically to workflow, but most of these solutions do come with a workflow component)
• Procurement: As architects, we have to be very carefully working with procurement (working with the RFPs, working with faculty).
• Training: what it means to set up an EA program. One person wanted to know what skill set an EA needs? Discussed in context of TOGAF skills framework.
• What it means to have a student type: too dependent on the business context. The group identified 3 types of students, how to federate these different definitions of students, and how to regulate access control based on different types of business content.
• Growing integration need between ERPs, portals, CMSes, IDM. Kuali financial integration was brought up during this discussion point.
• Digital signage: context of supporting faculty, possibility of digital signatures required for grants management and moving from paper to online grant submission. It was recognized that there is a need for central IT to form a stronger relationship with faculty groups.
• Architecture having to break down silos: a pain point on many campuses. The potential for a convergence model was discussed.
• Governance, in terms of central IT and EA on campuses.
• Cloud computing, virtualization, VMware.
• Security controls established by the government on researchers/faculty, and the higher demands this places on central IT (e.g. digital signatures).

An interesting point brought up during the Educause discussion: central IT is not buying into governance. Are we or are we not buying into it, from IT's perspective? The TOGAF discussion provided a framework for the group to discuss governance in terms of enterprise architecture/central IT.

(AI) - Marina - will send Jim the write-up of her notes from the ITANA session at Educause, and the names of people who were on the sign-up list.

---------------
Portal Survey Update

An announcement was sent out about 3 weeks ago. We received a steady stream of respondents, up until it was forwarded it to the Jasig conference, which resulted in a spike in responses.

It's too early to analyze results, and there will be a full report at the next call.

Preliminary Report:

• Most respondents were from US, 10-12 respondents came from abroad.
• All but a few respondents have portals at their institutions.
• There was a good distribution of frameworks; the majority were commercial portals, some were home-grown, etc.
• Period of deployment: 6 months ago to 10 years ago; average was about the 5-year range.

It was suggested that the group should try to schedule an Adobe Connect room for the next call so the results could be shared more easily.

---------------
EA in Higher Ed Survey Update

Jim will keep this out there, or have Paul send him the results and present for him.

There have been about the same number of respondents as two years ago; now we have about two-thirds of respondents reporting they have an EA.

---------------
Possible Regional F2F Meeting

It was suggested that be an EA group meeting at the Committee for Institutional Cooperation (CIC) events. This could serve as a regional ITANA F2F: Architecture as a leadership practice.

See the CIC Calendar of Events for locations: http://www.cic.net/Home/Calendar.aspx

These could provide a framework for regional peer groups for enterprise architects. From the point of view of pressure on travel, it would probably be attractive to a lot of people.

Question to consider: What peer groups do we meet with that it might make sense to attach
F2F meetings to?

A concern to consider:
There is interest in regional peer groups, and some people may be interested in volunteering to coordinate such groups. However, there is concern that attendance is low enough on these calls that we wouldn't want to dilute it.

It was pointed out that the idea is to tie in to the CIC or similar group to schedule F2F meetings on a regional level, and perhaps reduce the pressure on travel funds.

(AI) - Jim - will ask a few people to draft a statement about possibly tying in regional F2F meetings to Committee for Institutional Cooperation (CIC) events to share with the list.

---------------
Virtual Computer Labs

Rich Stevenson recently sent an email to the list about Dell's virtual computer lab offering, and whether anyone on the list was offering virtual computer labs - or any similar service - on your campuses.

Some questions to consider:

• Are these services turn-key?
• Do vendors bring the machines in place?
• Is the service run in the cloud?

---------------
Next Call: Thursday, November 11, 2010
2:00 p.m. (ET) / 1:00 p.m. (CT) / noon (MT) / 11:00 a.m. (PT)