The end of every academic year is a chance to evaluate the projects and initiatives that will become priorities during the next academic year. This summer, NYU IT worked with partners across NYU to identify our major undertakings, and I’m pleased to say that for the first time, everything we asked for has been approved and funded. This means we’re about to make a lot of great progress, and yes, it also means there will be a lot to do in the next 365 days. So first, I want to congratulate you on a very busy, very productive, and very successful 2023/24.
Now, I’d like to highlight some of what’s coming our way in 2024/25.
President Mills has 4 strategic pathways: Interdisciplinary Research, Science and Technology, Global, and Supportive Community. Information technology is a key enabler of each of these, with many of our projects helping to support NYU along these pathways. Others are focused on continuing to build the stable and secure foundation NYU requires to thrive.
Here are some of the important projects that support NYU and may have an impact on your school or unit, or on NYU IT.
NYU ServiceLInk Transformation (zBoot): ServiceLink was developed using the ServiceNow platform when the functionality of the product was limited to Information Technology Service Management (ITSM). Since then, the product evolved to include Customer Service Manager (CSM) and Human Resources Service Delivery (HRSD). The zBoot project uses the out-of-the-box functionality to implement CSM, HRSD, and ITSM, drop all the customizations that NYU developed in the old platform, and use ServiceNow best practices. This work will help support product features, enhancements, and upgrades as we are not currently able to do so due to conflicts between NYU customizations and out-of-the-box ServiceNow functionality.
The Identity and Access Management (IAM) program will improve NYU’s IAM directory, SSO, and MFA capabilities while enhancing system maintenance and resilience capabilities and providing a solid platform for integrating identities across NYU. This modernization prepares NYU for future threats and simplifies integrations. The program will also address identity data quality related to onboarding, changing roles, and offboarding. Fewer accounts will also reduce licensing costs and improve applications’ performance. Simpler rules that can be communicated more easily will allow the community to better understand expectations around what services will be available and when.
Google Workspace for Education Service Redesign addresses the change to the Google Workspace for Education (GWE) product offering to align NYU with changes in Google’s business model and the newly imposed pooled storage, including an end to unlimited storage as of July 2022.
Classroom AV Refresh allows NYU IT to increase our annual AV classroom refresh to maintain a healthier refresh cycle. It will bring our total AVM-aligned room count to 261 (out of 320 rooms), furthering our strategic goal of having all AV rooms be AVM-aligned for accessibility, security, and a common teaching experience.
The Integrated Student Experience program includes changes to process and software solutions to improve the NYU student experience. NYU IT will also consolidate license agreements for Salesforce and potentially seek better overall pricing, align to support consistent use of best practices, make it easier to share and reuse code and data sets across schools and units, and reduce business and technical risks for NYU.
High Performance Computing will refresh the Greene HPC Environment with current technology.
Compass will provide better visualization and analytic tools to support data-driven decision-making. Compass will be more focused on strategic decision-making where SLIP was more of an operational tool.
Check out our NYU IT FY25 Project List to learn more about what we’ll be focusing on in the coming year.