Dear Vanderbilt IT Team,

Thank you all for your exceptional work on cutover activities!  From April 27 through May 6, Vanderbilt IT collaborated with customer teams (often well beyond the typical work day) to modify our administrative systems to accommodate the new VU and VUMC entities. Following a carefully planned “Cutover Playbook,” changes rippled into effect for Human Resources, Identity, Academic Systems, Finance, Development and Alumni Relations, and Business Intelligence applications, among others. Activity peaked late Friday night through the end of Saturday with the VUMC and VU emergency operations centers at the ready. I am pleased to report that, with only a few well-managed exceptions, we completed all cutover events on time or even early. I appreciate all of the extra time and work you dedicated to making legal separation successful—this was a tremendous accomplishment! Our individual contributions will enable each entity to move forward focusing on a single mission, either quality healthcare or excellence in higher education. For this, we can feel a sense of profound pride.

On the heels of legal close, some of you may be wondering what is coming next. For the foreseeable future, I will lead both the Medical Center and the university IT entities. Team members will continue receiving All Hands newsletters; however, VUMC IT and VUIT will receive separate All Hands beginning next month.

In a similar vein, VUMC IT and VUIT will continue to work closely together on many projects. Legal close itself was not necessarily the finish line as there is still work to be done to assure a smooth transition. We will continue to work towards complete separation as we tease apart the infrastructure and shared systems for the next few years.

I will share more about the next steps in building out both organizations at the All Hands meeting and lunch on Monday, May 16. The event takes place from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the dining hall at The Commons. As we celebrate our accomplishments together, this will be a joint meeting with both VUMC IT and VUIT team members. I look forward to seeing you there!

Sincerely,
John

P.S. If you have any questions for me, stop by my office hours on Thursday, May 19, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at 3401 West End, Ste. 600, Conference Room 629.

OUT AND ABOUT: CUSTOMER-FACING UPDATES

Ten successful dual identity mini cutovers completed before legal close

Between January 14 and April 27, the identity project team conducted ten mini cutovers to position dual identity users to sustain system access to Medical Center systems at legal close. Dual identity users consist of students, faculty, and staff that require access to both Medical Center and university systems. Impacted users require two separate VUnetIDs to operate each entity’s unique systems at legal close.

The identity project team did an outstanding job preparing both organizations for this critical transition. The team began with a pilot in early January to migrate a subset of the School of Medicine and School of Nursing students and faculty. Using the lessons learned in that pilot, the team executed nine subsequent migrations positioning the organization for a smooth transition upon legal close weekend. The dedicated team communicated with a staggering number of fragmented customers and stakeholders, migrated users very early in the morning or very late at night, tracked down users who had lost or ignored emails, and organized systematic production support procedures to deal with issues. The team provided exceptional customer support to the impacted users, as well as their managers and administrators. Though the total number of users the team migrated seems small relative to the entire population, the effort was truly enormous. In addition to migrating dual identity users, the team simultaneously conducted dress rehearsals for split weekend and prepped for legal close with Human Resources, Health IT, and Academic Systems. I would like to extend my deep appreciation and gratitude to this amazing team for all of their hard work and for pulling off one of the most complex technical components of the legal close transition.

For more information on how the team executed the migrations and how they supported users, visit the dual identity support website.

Contact: Sarah Hagovsky, sarah.hagovsky@vanderbilt.edu

Vanderbilt Employee Picnic scheduled for May 17

The 2016 Vanderbilt Employee Celebration is scheduled for Tuesday, May 17, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the University Library Lawn for those working the day shift and from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. at the Light Hall North Lobby for those working the night shift.

The picnic will be catered by Famous Dave’s and will offer grilled chicken breasts, all-beef hot dogs, veggie burgers, coleslaw, potato salad, and cookies.

For more information, please view the flyer.

Contact: Dianne Wehlage, dianne.wehlage@vanderbilt.edu; Milli Vincent, milli.vincent@vanderbilt.edu

Volunteer to work at summer code camp

The Nashville Technology Council has partnered with We Build Tech in hosting 24 code camp sessions between May 30 and July 29 for ages 8 to 18 and is looking for volunteers. There are a variety of volunteer opportunities, such as helping teach the camp for a week or speaking about careers for an hour with a group.

The camp teaches the basics of programming in an engaging, real-world environment and includes lessons on Scratch, Python with MineCraft, game building in Unity, building webpages, VEX Robotics, Raspberry Pi, animations in Java, Sphero, and advanced Java.

For more information, visit http://technologycouncil.com/we-build-tech/2016-we-build-tech-summer-camps/. To sign up as a volunteer, visit the Coding Camp Volunteer Opportunities webpage.

NOTE: This is a volunteer opportunity and is not sanctioned by Vanderbilt. Volunteers will not be compensated for their time by Vanderbilt.

Contact: Milli Vincent, milli.vincent@vanderbilt.edu; Kim Mallory, kim.mallory@vanderbilt.edu

Reminder: Create a Web Communications ticket to request new projects, site fixes

If you need assistance updating the VUIT or other public-facing website, or have a general website question, email Leslie Buchanan directly and she can assist. To request help directly from University Web Communications on a Web project or site fix, please create a ticket with University Web Communications. Do not use Pegasus for public-facing website changes and updates. All Web requests should start with one of these two methods.

Contact: Leslie Buchanan, leslie.buchanan@vanderbilt.edu

VUIT Open Systems Applications and Cloud Services installs SkyVU ancillary applications and services

As part of the SkyVU ERP implementation, VUIT Open Systems Applications and Cloud Services (formerly VUIT Java and Linux Applications) installed and configured three application components into the development environment for Application Development to begin its efforts.  These components include:

• Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) – This application will be used for reporting and analysis. The team installed and configured the application with help from an on-site consultant.
• IBM InfoSphere Information Server used to extract, transform and load data from various databases.
• IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management (MDM) will allow the university to link all of the person data to one file and one source. The team installed and configured this application with help from an on-site consultant.

The successful integration of the application architecture across on-premises and cloud infrastructure will demonstrate VUIT’s ability to foster innovation and explore new approaches to delivering vastly improved services to university customers.

Contact: Ed Wisdom, ed.wisdom@vanderbilt.edu

SkyVU to modernize university systems by mid-2017

In November 2015, the Board of Trust approved the initiation of a project to replace the university’s financial, administrative, and research support systems. This project, called SkyVU, will transform Vanderbilt’s administrative processes and the underlying technology across financial, administrative, and research support organizations by making each less complicated and more efficient, while consolidating system applications and mitigating risk.

SkyVU will support the university’s unique and growing needs and aspirations as driven by the Academic Strategic Plan. The cloud-based system will replace a myriad of applications, such as Concur (employee reimbursement only), eDog, eProcurement, DMS, and C2HR, to provide a modern and synchronized environment. This environment will allow university faculty and staff to spend less time on paperwork and more time on efforts that contribute to the university’s mission by July 2017.

In March, a team of staff led by Mark Williams and Nicole Oeser officially kicked off the SkyVU project to develop the plans and processes necessary to transition from existing systems to a new cloud-based environment with Oracle Cloud.

The SkyVU website is set to launch mid-May.

For more information, read the MyVU article, watch the informational video, or contact the SkyVU team at skyvu@vanderbilt.edu.

Contact: Leslie Buchanan, leslie.buchanan@vanderbilt.edu

Summer 2016 classroom refresh officially underway

VUIT’s Distributed Technology Service AV Design & Support team recently kicked off its Summer 2016 classroom refresh, beginning with two of the largest classrooms on campus: Stevenson Center 4309 and 4327. The kickoff phase involves holding meetings with faculty members who teach in the specific rooms, the AV systems integrator (LMG, Inc.), the AV team, desktop support team, Plant Operations, and key Academic Affairs customers. This group provides critical feedback that allows AV Design & Support to tailor the equipment refresh to meet the pedagogical needs of the faculty, enhance the student experience, and leverage modern technology in the classroom.

Contact: BC Hatchett, bc.hatchett@vanderbilt.edu

VUIT’s Distributed Technology Services assists with undergraduate “Vanderbilt Votes” initiative

Vanderbilt IT’s Distributed Technology Services (DTS) team assisted students in the College of Arts & Science and Peabody with a Human and Organizational Development (HOD) project focused on the 2016 Presidential Election called “Vanderbilt Votes.” DTS loaned several printers and oversaw setup and configuration during the event March 15-23. As a result of this initiative, nearly 500 students either registered to vote or applied for absentee ballots. The student project organizer commented, “This would not have been possible without VUIT’s assistance. My team is so grateful for the help.”

Contact: Megan Naughton, megan.naughton@vanderbilt.edu

THE INSIDE SCOOP

IT service level agreements completed for legal separation

In preparation for the separation of the university and Medical Center, VUIT and VUMC IT partnered in identifying 45 IT services that both organizations would need to share. For each of the services identified, VUIT Product and Service Management created a service level agreement (SLA) including descriptions of the services to be provided, client responsibilities, and service costs.  The university will provide 27 services to the Medical Center, and the Medical Center, in turn, will provide 18 services to the university.  For the duration of the transition, individual services may be terminated as each entity establishes its own ability to provide these services themselves.

The creation of these SLAs involved numerous VUIT and VUMC IT teams who spent hours researching, providing input, reviewing, and publishing the provided services. With their support, VUIT Product and Service Management compiled and completed the delivery of all 45 SLAs to the legal teams on April 11.

Contact: Craig Hampton, craig.hampton@vanderbilt.edu

West phone system conversion completed

After more than one year of work by many, the West phone system went live on April 13. The Pain Center was the first department moved to the system; subsequent groups began rolling out Tuesday, April 19.

The West project is an initiative to move current automatic call distributor (ACD) operations to another platform called “West.” There will be 22 clinics in the first phase, which includes 160 Vanderbilt numbers to be ported. Voice Services was responsible for researching these numbers and their affiliations with departments and creating a corresponding backfill number for each line. Once the cutover takes place, Voice Services must perform clean up on Vanderbilt’s PBX, ACD, and voicemail systems. The cutovers will be complete May 5.

Contact: Phyllis Gray, phyllis.a.gray@vanderbilt.edu

Voice Services upgrades surgery department phones to Lync

In support of the department’s decision to cut cost, Voice Services is converting 100 surgery department phones to Lync. Phase 1 of this conversion was completed March 31.

Contact: Phyllis Gray, phyllis.a.gray@vanderbilt.edu

VUMC IT Security Operations enables multicast technology for data center

During the month of April, VUMC IT Security Operations enabled and made available the use of multicast technology service within the Hill Center data center. The immediate benefits of this deployment include the ability for the Red Hat teams to effectively cluster their supported systems within the Hill Center data center that require a high-availability model or a load-balancing requirement.

Contact: VUIT Network Security, vuit.network.security@vanderbilt.edu

Upgrades to enterprise control points successful

VUMC IT Security Operations applied the latest minor release from Palo Alto Networks on the enterprise control points to resolve a critical security vulnerability in April. Additionally, this release eliminated certain community-identified bugs that had caused operational impacts.

Contact: VUIT Network Security, vuit.network.security@vanderbilt.edu

VUMC IT Security Operations completes lifecycle and upgrade to Vanderbilt’s perimeter firewall

Last month, VUMC IT Security Operations migrated all perimeter infrastructures to a new Palo Alto Networks platform. This change consolidated all IPS/IDS, firewall, and IP-Sec virtual private network (VPN) technologies, which greatly reduced the management overhead of this environment.

Contact: VUIT Network Security, vuit.network.security@vanderbilt.edu

CUSTOMER KUDOS

Kudos to Victor Herbert and Barry McCurry, network engineers with VUIT’s Network Design & Engineering team, and Rob Knight, a network specialist with VUIT’s Network Operations team

“Change was completed at 4:30 a.m. All went well. One AP did not come back on-line out of 313 AP’s moved and upgraded.  It is in a student room in Gillette Hall and will be addressed at 9 a.m. The students will connect to an adjacent AP so there should not be a service issue. Kudos to Victor Herbert, Barry McCurry, and Rob Knight for getting this done and helping to make it as transparent and painless to our customers as we possibly could.”

Kudos to Jon Bates, a senior media support specialist with VUIT’s Distributed Technology Services

“I just wanted to write to compliment the excellent work of Jon Bates this semester.  Jon has been efficient and helpful in all my interactions with him, and he goes the extra mile to help.”

Kudos to Carol Beverly, a media support representative with VUIT’s Distributed Technology Services

“Carol Beverly is, as always, one of the best things about Vanderbilt. She is unfailingly gracious and efficient, and she handles my tendency toward last-minute requests with a kindness they do not deserve.”

Kudos to Tim Oldham, a system administrator with VUIT’s Distributed Technology Services

“Five minutes before a meeting and two hours before I had to teach, my laptop failed. Tim Oldham gave it his undivided attention and worked to solve the problem while providing me with a loaner system. He has been extremely helpful. No one wants computer issues, of course, but under the circumstances it was a pleasure working with him and I feel like I am in very good hands.”

Kudos to Greg Stoermer, a senior technical support specialist with VMDP of VUIT’s End User Services

“It has been extremely busy, and earlier today I was in a hurry opening emails and documents. In the process, somehow I accidentally clicked on something that changed a viewing setting in my Outlook. This changed the appearance of my incoming emails, and it was difficult for me to read… Evidently, what I did was not an easy fix, but Greg Stoermer persevered for a resolve. He called me back and remoted into my computer. With a few clicks of the mouse, he restored my email appearance. Greg went above and beyond to assist me, and I wanted you to know how much I appreciate it.”

Kudos to Chris Sheppard, a senior technical support specialist with VMDP of VUIT’s End User Services

“My team and I have worked with Chris Sheppard many times over the years, and he always provides a high level of service and does it with an attitude that I think is exemplary. On top of that, he is just a really good guy. VUIT could use more people like him in customer-facing roles.”

Kudos to Jason Bradley, director of VUIT’s Distributed Technology Services

“Jason Bradley went above and beyond helping me with a special project for SkyVU. He was creative, responsive, and communicative.  I’m so thankful he shared his talents to help the project, even though it was outside his job description.”

UPDATE FROM HUMAN RESOURCES

VUIT Referral Eligible Positions

None

VUIT New Hires

Kiran Kamatham, App Dev & Integration
Jillian Poris, Transition, ERP & Analysis
Nathan Somers, Dist. Tech Services
Jeanette Honeysucker, Business Intelligence
Clara Bowles, Operator Svcs
Christine Wix, Operator Svcs
Wesley Walker, Dist. Tech Services
Tyrone Mallett, Dist. Tech Services

VUIT Transfers

None

VUIT Departures

Jason Lassiter, Dist. Tech Services

VUIT Job Postings

Sr Technical Support Spec, 1602536
Sr Collaboration Administrator, 1602739
Sr System Administrator, 1602887
Mgr Collaboration Administration, 1602893
Assoc Data Warehouse Admin, 1602933
Sr Technical Support Spec, 1603581
Security Analyst, 1602123
Sr System Engineer, 1601792
Computer Facilities Analyst, 1601540
Assoc Bus Intelligence Analyst, 1601268
Sr IT Consultant, 1601876
Assoc Collaboration Admin, 1602512
Principal Security Architect, 1602955

VUMC IT Referral Eligible Positions

None

VUMC IT New Hires

Jeffrey Dyer, Business App Development
Richard Phelps, Data Center Services
Julius Kent Young, End User Services
Charles Tilton, End User Services

VUMC IT Transfers

None

VUMC IT Departures

None

VUMC IT Job Postings

Computer Facilities Analyst, 1510842
Accounting Assistance IV, 1510848
IT Consultant, 1513365
Sr Collaboration Admin, 1600881
Application Developer, 1601748
Application Developer, 1600994
Assoc Network Security Analyst, 1602446
System Admin, 1603357

Contact: Laraine Caldwell, laraine.caldwell@vanderbilt.edu; Angela Leslie-Bratton, angela.r.leslie-bratton@vanderbilt.edu; Marcell Troupe, marcell.troupe@vanderbilt.edu

LEARN SOMETHING NEW

Complimentary Gartner Webinars: May

Each month, Gartner offers free webinars that are open to everyone. Below are the options scheduled for May. Please feel free to attend as many as your time allows. If you have any questions or have trouble accessing the training session, please email gartnerwebinars@gartner.com.

May 12, 2016

Your Future Office: Traditional or Cloud? Microsoft? Google?
How to Know If Your Vendor Is in Trouble

May 16, 2016
Opportunities for Midmarket IT Leaders to Modernize Storage

May 17, 2016
Business Value Dashboards: Your Pathway to Business Impact Alignment
Paralysis by Analysis: The State of Data Security

May 18, 2016
Measuring the Business Value of Analytics
How Cloud Is Revolutionizing Modern Application Development

May 19, 2016
Pain Points of Managing Mobile Devices for SMBs
Staffing and Structuring the Office of the CDO
Hadoop at 10: Grown Up or Adolescent?

May 23, 2016
Making Private and Hybrid Cloud Work

May 24, 2016
Cloud Wars: Comparing Major Cloud Platform Providers
Digital Disrupts Service Opportunities in Vertical Industries

May 25, 2016
Surviving a Software Audit
Colocation: A Critical Role in a Data-Center-and-Networking Strategy

May 26, 2016
10 Critical Elements for Successful Risk Management Programs
Delivering High-Impact Reference Models and Roadmaps

May 31, 2016
The IoT Scenario: Growth Opportunities for Vendors

On-Demand—Watch Anytime, Anywhere
Digital Business KPIs: Goals and Metrics That Define Success
Building a Digital Business: CIO and IT Perspective
Design and Develop Applications for Mobile BI
How to Architect the “Modern” BI and Analytics Platform
Magic Quadrant Power Session: BI and Analytics Platforms
The Fundamentals of a BI and Analytics Program