Victoria University of Wellington(MIS100 2010)

By Jess Meyer | Thursday, May 27 2010

2009 ranking: 15

Senior IS executive: Stuart Haselden, director Information Technology Services
Reports to: Chief operating officer
Size of IS shop: 150

PCs: 5517
Mobile PCs: 943
Terminals: 708
Hand-held devices: 120
Total screens: 7288

Industry: Educational services
PC environment: Dell, Windows XP, Red Hat
Server environment: Dell; IBM; Windows 2003, 2008; Red Hat
DBMS: Oracle, SQL
Address: Kelburn Parade, Wellington
Website: www.vuw.ac.nz
Key IS projects this year: Identity management; business system upgrades; process improvement

Gaining the maximum use from current IT systems and enhancing business process are the key drivers for IT at Victoria University in 2010, with the ICT team a major player in strategy, planning and development. Several ongoing projects will continue this year, including further deployment of business intelligence, identity anagement and new projects around CRM and document management. Virtualisation systems are now heavily used, with a new production system installed at the end of 2009 using 10GB networking, and test/dev also on a virtual platform. Rollouts of VoIP in satellite campuses will be completed shortly and further development of disaster recovery applications is underway.

“IT is a key enabler of business process and we are working to ensure business process is helped, not hindered by the systems we have in place,” says Stuart Haselden, director information technology services. This is evident in key projects for 2010, with a focus on identity management, including password management, document and customer relationship management and enhanced lecture recording. “These projects will be used to enhance our overall performance and to reduce the overhead of administration functions,” says Haselde n.
New opportunities around SaaS are being investigated but, like any new project at Victoria University, these will be weighed against quality, service, and both short and long-term cost. The demands from students for high-quality services continues to drive the IT group, including ‘no-charge’ internet access and enhanced wireless services.