London HE and FE IT Directors Forum held on Tuesday 04 July 2006 at Birkbeck University of London.

Agenda

Notes of meeting

Attendance:

Dr Jasbir Gill Birkbeck University of London (Chair)
Ayo Adaramola Southwark College
Harvey Baxter Sir George Monoux College
Nick Clark Tower Hamlets
Jeremy Harrington Institute of Cancer Research
Bilal Hashmi Middlesex University
Liz Howard City of Westminster College
Tony Jack Newham College
Andrew Kerl UCL
Paul Marsden Croydon College
Moeen Muzaffar St Mary's College
Mangal Patel Queen Mary University of London
Malcolm Raggett School of Oriental and African Studies
Dr David Rippon ULCC
Jonathan Warner Royal College of Arts
Neil Dickinson LMN
Maria Ilia LMN (notes)
Pete White LMN

Jasbir Gill (JG) chaired the meeting. Four topics had been selected for discussion based on the outcome from previous HE and FE IT Directors' Forum.

1. Remit of Combined FE and HE IT Directors' Forum.

JG opened the forum with a brief overview of its aims: an informal opportunity for London's HE and FE IT Directors to discuss specific issues and share common best practice. It is also an opportunity for suggesting services that the members would like LMN to develop on behalf of the community. Then JG went through the agenda for the day and introduced the first speaker.

2. Supplier partnerships-MR

MR presented the latest agreement of leasing equipment for his institution. Presentation.

TJ asked what happens in cases of vandalism. MR replied that although he had not experienced vandalism of leased equipment he allowed about £5k/year for loss of machines or faults. MR also pointed out that suppliers are willing to replace faulty components with ones that have an equivalent specification-sometimes using second hand parts.

PM enquired about annual deployment costs and MR mentioned that these came to £65/year per machine.

JW asked how many students pc are leased at SOAS and whether the number of these is changeable. MR replied that there are 200 student pcs and that this number is stable.

MP asked whether there is any maintenance provided in the contract and MR answered that there is no maintenance cover and that all maintenance is provided in house and highlighted that the equipment is still under guarantee.

JH wondered whether there are any servers on the lease. MR replied that virtually all servers at SOAS are under 3 year lease with the option to buy when the lease ends or extend to 5 years and then replace it with new ones. MR also added that he has experienced no problems with upgrading licensed servers while on lease.

NC asked whether the cost of leasing would come under capital or current budget. MR replied that it comes from current since the leased equipment is not the institution's property.

TJ finally enquired whether there is a possibility to change or extend the contract before the expiry of term. MR said that this is possible and for example if one required a few hundred more pc's then the best way would be to get a separate lease for the few hundred extra pc. Each lease is separate and self contained.

3. Pop shift and SJ5

JG invited PW to brief the attendees on current development with the PoP shift from the ULCC PoP to Stewart House.
PW explained that 15 out 39 institutions have now been transferred. Presentation.

PW then introduced AK the procurement officer for the LMN 3 network to describe recent developments.

AK closed his discussion by confirming that one of the main features of the new LMN3 network is to provide resilience to all LMN member institutions. AK then invited the attendees for comments or expectations that they may have from the LMN3 network. Presentation.

All attendees agreed with AK as resilience being their major priority.

4. LMN Representation and Communications

MI asked the attendees whether they would be happy to have an LMN representative within each LMN institution. Briefly MI described how LMN institutions would benefit most from LMN by nominating an LMN ambassador within their institution. Presentation.

Outcome: All attendees welcomed the proposal of sharing their technological aspirations with LMN but thought that it would be difficult to nominate a single person within an institution as the LMN ambassador.

BH mentioned that he would be very willing to help MI map Middlesex University's technological needs but that he sees no need to have an LMN representative in his institution.

NC liked the proposal as it would enable LMN to discover particular needs within each institution. LH highlighted that all institutions are at different stages and have different priorities.

JG agreed that the best way forward would be to map LMN's community needs from pre-existing surveys or UCISA and identify some areas of commonality for LMN to focus upon. NC pointed out that the current practice of LMN developing relationships with suppliers on behalf of the London community was working well - e.g. InTechnology and Message Labs partnerships.

Action: MI to continue an active plan of one to one visits to institutions and discover any common requirements across the LMN community.

5. Issues of interest

JG highlighted that there are similarities between LMN and UCISA surveys. He also mentioned the poor response to the survey that preceded this forum with only 20% of the community having responded.

BH mentioned that we could use UCISA surveys only and then ask UCISA to produce a regionalised analysis of results for the London community. MP agreed and said that there is no need for more surveys from LMN.

JG said that he would be happy to contact UCISA to facilitate surveys for the LMN community.

NC questioned the use of UCISA since the FE community would be left out
and PW highlighted that the online backup and restore service from InTechnology, which has been very successful with the LMN community, was developed following an LMN survey; both LH and PM agreed.

It should be noted that FE membership of UCISA is increasing. HB added that the FE community can offer expertise on localised solutions which they can then be customised to the needs of other institutions.

Action: MI to talk with JG about a unified approach of gathering needs and aspirations from the FE and HE LMN community.

JG then shared with the attendees that he had been approached by Gartner regarding their Higher Education initiative for the provision of research and advisory services developed in association with UCISA, UNIS and EDUCAUSE; JG had been also contacted by Salford Software on the implementation of Identity Management Solutions from SUN, Microsoft and Novell. Both of these suppliers would like to make a presentation to the LMN community. JG asked the attendees whether they would be interested in having a presentation at the next forum.

NC mentioned that he had encountered an organisation similar to Gartner in the past and he valued their contribution. NC also thought that the LMN community would benefit from such a source. JH mentioned that Gartner are very clear and explicit in their advisory process and TJ agreed and added that Gartner have ability to discount and that it would be of great benefit to the LMN community.

Action: MI/JG to arrange a presentation from Gartner at the next Forum.

On the issue of identity management all attendees agreed that this is something they will all have to face soon as Athens will be replaced by Shibboleth. JG mentioned that he was hoping to share views on hosting a presentation for LMN at the University of Westminster.

Action: MI to find out more from SJ on his identity management and organise an event on this subject.

The forum closed with AK reengaging the attendees on the LMN 3 procurement and asked attendees whether they would be interested in having a consulting event with network managers.

Outcome: All attendees agreed and AK mentioned that this event would take place early October 2006.

JG closed the forum and thanked all delegates for their contribution.

Action: MI to arrange next IT Director's Forum in December 2006.