Kansas State University

November is the perfect opportunity to thank the IT staff for all they do to support K-State 2025, Strategic Enrollment Management, the new budget model, the IT Strategic Plan, One IT and so much more.

The hard work of staff was recognized when K-State was named the recipient of the E&I Cloud Leadership Award for the Hybrid Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) category. There were over a hundred applications for the award categories. K-State’s recognition was due to careful planning, the innovative hybrid approach, and the speed of the move to cloud services. Thank you to the IT staff from a grateful campus.

The summary that follows is organized by strategic goals within the IT Strategic Plan.

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Information Technology Services is preparing for the move of the Financial Information System (FIS), the K-State Student Information System (KSIS) and the Human Resource Information System (HRIS) to the cloud. The date for the move from on-premise to the cloud is pending. We wanted to inform K-Staters of this change in advance of any outage. 

Why are the systems moving to cloud services? The move of our financial, student and human resource systems to the cloud is part of the IT Strategic Plan to modernize the IT infrastructure and move forward with our cloud first strategy. 

Will users notice any differences? Our users should not notice any change in services or functionality. However, some bookmarks might need to be updated.  

Will there be an outage when the systems go live? There will be a period of time when the systems are offline. K-Staters will be notified prior to any downtime of the systems. The outage for FIS will be approximately three days. The outage for HRIS and KSIS will be four days.  

Who do you contact with issues? Contact the IT Help Desk at 785-532-7722 or put in a ticket from helpdesk@ksu.edu. 

Fall is a spooky time of year with cooler weather, hundreds of events across campus and IT staff cranking on projects. Duo, two factor authentication, is coming to the final three faculty/staff groups and the cloud first strategy continues with moves of priority systems to the cloud.

Staff

As part of the IT Reorganization process, Gary Pratt, CIO announced the combining of the Network Operations Center and the Information Security and Compliance Office to form the Security Intelligence and Operations Center.

Scott Finkeldei has accepted the role of Director for Academic and Student Technology. In this role, Scott will continue to lead the faculty support services provided by the Office of Mediated Education (OME). Additionally, Scott will provide a more focused effort in providing direct support for faculty in the teaching, learning and scholarship arenas as well as support the student success technology needs of campus.

IT continues to emphasize professional development for staff especially in the areas of ITIL and cloud strategies.

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Dear Colleagues,

Plans to modernize K-State’s IT infrastructure are an important part of the 2018 IT Strategic Plan as we work to deliver the IT services required of a top 50 public research University.  The damage to K-State’s primary data center caused by the Hale fire provides an opportunity to accelerate the timeline to execute a cloud first strategy. To support this important strategic objective K-State’s One IT is creating a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) for the governance, advocacy, training and resources necessary to align cloud migration activities with K-State’s goals.

K-State’s Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) is a centralized cloud computing governance function that serves as an internal cloud service broker and acts in a consultative role for central and distributed IT, and consumers of cloud services across campus. The CCoE oversees functions such as cloud computing policy, cloud provider selection and relationships, cloud solution architecture, workload placement and governance. The CCoE provides guidelines and guardrails that improve outcomes and manage risks. The CCoE does not have day-to-day operational responsibilities, nor is it a sourcing or vendor management organization, nor a project management organization.

In the coming weeks, the core team will be meeting with entities across campus to explain the functions of the CCoE as we create the infrastructure for a top 50 public research university. More information about the CCoE is available from: https://www.k-state.edu/it-strategic-planning/ccoe/index.html

Sincerely,

Gary Pratt, Chief Information Officer