The Office of Information Technology will have a new home this month. OIT has moved to a new building at 300 Lem Morrison Drive and will consolidate from nine different offices formerly located in Parker Hall, Telecom Building, Dunstan Hall, Property Services and the L Building.
Combining these offices into one building allows OIT to be more effective and efficient, said Suzanne Webster, administrative support associate.
"Having folks in separate locations makes collaboration more difficult and is confusing for the user community," said Bliss Bailey, executive director for OIT.
The new building will contain resource rooms where small groups can collaborate on projects. Larger conference rooms are also available for employees to meet.
OIT's new home began preliminary planning in 1998, but the project languished from lack of funds for many years, Bailey said.
Construction officially began in December 2009.
The building is almost completely finished and the personnel have already started to move in. OIT plans to completely finish the move by March 14.
One perk of having a new office is a new data center.
"The data center is where most of the University's computer servers are housed," Bailey said.
Equipment will be closely monitored at the new location.
The new OIT building will now require biometric authentication for access, according to Bailey.
"It has state-of-the-art capacity--more security and better provisions to protect the equipment," Webster said.
The building has backup generators as well as a backup chiller so the facility can continue operating in case of a power outage. In case of fire, state-of-the-art technology will be use to fight the flames.
"The fire detection and suppression system is extremely sensitive and uses a special 'clean agent' gas to snuff out a fire without damaging the computers," Bailey said.
Other services housed at the new location will include the OIT machinery, network and voice services, identity management, AU Lease, campus web solutions, classroom support and test scoring services.
Although OIT's offices and services will be based in the new building, not all of OIT's branches will move.
The help desks in RBD Library, the IMG office in the Haley Center and the student PC shop for on-campus housing will remain in their locations.
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