ICT News, April 2006
- Review of ICT recharging
- Evolving the CMS and web services to suit your needs
- Sophos email filtering update
- Disaster Recovery verification update
- PeopleSoft and eProcurement projects update
Review of ICT recharging
ICT delivers a wide variety of applications and services across the University. In many cases, units pay charges to ICT in return. Over time, this recharging regime has grown to be complex, not always consistent, and in some cases expensive and bureaucratic to administer.
A consultant has therefore been engaged to review and assess all ICT-related recharging arrangements. The review will include documentation of current approaches for different services, the overhead costs involved, and any associated issues.
The consultant will then develop a short list of high-level options to address issues identified, including rationales for recharging (or not recharging), what services should be recharged and how, and where costs should be borne. The consultant will also provide leadership in developing an implementation plan and a timetable.
Work commences in late April, for completion by the end of May.
Evolving the CMS and web services to suit your needs
Along with improvements to the current Content Management System service provided by Web Services, the following initiatives are under way to increase the overall functionality of the platform and other services available:
- News and events: providing a mechanism for publishing and storing of news stories and events information
- Form-builder: providing the ability to create forms on CMS pages, to allow readers to submit information or feedback
- Course information: providing the ability to add course search, course listings and course information to CMS pages
- Search engine: improving the capability of the University's search engine
- Newsletter service: providing a marketing tool to enable the creation, management and sending of email newsletters and campaign bulletins.
Web Services is currently working on the above initiatives in consultation with many areas of the university. If you have any questions or would like to provide some input, please email .
Sophos email filtering update
As announced in March, ICT is introducing Sophos PureMessage to provide filtering against email spam and viruses. This is now in place for Central MCS Exchange email, and the next target is all centrally managed @usyd.edu.au addresses, including student ones.
Sophos has also been set up as a relay in front of one mail server in a faculty (note that this works best if there is a directory of known mail addresses available, to simplify non-existent address handling). Good results are being obtained in reduction of spam.
Further information is available about how the Sophos quarantine system works after it has been installed for your mail service.
A number of units have already requested that Sophos be applied as a filter in front of departmental mail servers. Since the University has a site-wide licence for Sophos up to a total maximum number of users, another available option is for units to run PureMessage directly on their own mail servers. It is available on Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD, but (updated 24 May) not on Windows/Exchange under the present licence.
If you would like to join the queue for introduction of the filter service, or to enquire about running PureMessage directly, please contact Jim Richardson. There is no charge to units for using the service or the software.
Disaster Recovery verification update
As mentioned in the March Disaster Recovery news item, work is under way to verify DR measures for major University information services. Preliminary DR tests have now been carried out for FlexSIS as well as the Finance system, with testing for email scheduled for May. A more extensive testing regime is being developed which will entail recurring tests, according to a schedule to be agreed with clients and then announced.
PeopleSoft and eProcurement projects update
Further to a March news item, the April eProcurement Newsletter is now available on the eProcurement Project web page. This newsletter includes details of training for eProcurement, which will involve classroom sessions and/or e-learning.
Also available is information from the April/May 2006 project forums, entitled "eProcurement and PeopleSoft Upgrade Project Overview".
