The General Access Lab Virtualization project was awarded supplemental budget monies and is in the process of implementation. The goal of the project is to make university supported software, both general productivity software and curricular specific software, available to students, faculty and staff in an anytime, anywhere-there-is-Internet access environment. The phased-in approach to this will include:
- Allow access to our academic software from on-campus students' personally owned computers over our campus wireless network.
- Allow students, faculty and staff physically off our campus network to access our academic software where feasible.
Functional Requirements
As work progresses, the following requirements will be supported:
- The solution must allow students full use of the application(s) being virtualized. It must have the same functionality as if the software was physically loaded on the personally-owned computer
- The solution must be sustainable. There will be yearly ongoing costs (for things like hardware rotation for the servers and software licensing). These costs, plus the costs of supporting the virtualized lab project must be sustainable. There has to be adequate revenue to cover the ongoing costs.
- The solution must be accessible from both PCs and Macs running current operating systems, Windows 7 and Mac OS X. The virtual environment for both Windows and Mac clients will be based on a Windows interface and only applications that run under Windows will be available. Support for mobile environments is desirable but not required.
- Software licensing agreements will be strictly upheld using the same technology used to monitor licenses within labs.
- Software must be able to be licensed for a reasonable dollar amount. Software vendors who either do not allow their software to be used virtually or charge exorbitant amounts to license their software to run virtually will be considered out of scope for economic/legal reasons.
Project Timeline
- Phase 1: Create project plan, select and install system hardware and software, identify pilot application software
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- January, 2011
- January, 2011
- Phase 2: Build pilot software packages and run pilot with limited audience, build continuing budget
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- August, 2011
- August, 2011
- Phase 3: Increase number of applications available and locations from which students/faculty can access software
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- January, 2012
- January, 2012
- Phase 4: Launch to all students, consider deploying to general access labs, increase number of applications available
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- December, 2012
Steering Committee
- Mike Wick – Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of Graduate Studies
- Craig Mey – Director of Learning & Technology Services
- Christina Hupy – Representative from College of Arts & Sciences
- Dawna Drum, Representative from College of Business
- Marcia Bollinger, Representative from College of Nursing & Health Sciences
- Carol Koroghlanian, Representative from College of Education and Human Sciences
- Steven VanDeLaarschot, Student Representative
Project Management and Technical Implementation Team
- Chip Eckardt, Project Manager
- Bev Miller, Assistant Project Manager
- Jamison Schmidt, System Administrator
- Tom Pemberton, System Administrator
- Catherine Davis, Mobile Computing Support
