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and location appropriate content to be displayed.
Students, for example in the FBE, now have this
added communication means to know that a guest
lecture will take place when and where.
Transforming the Digital Landscape
Every day the UAEU network carries thousands of
email messages, electronic financial transactions,
voice and video communication and web application
processes that are required to manage daily business,
assist learning, and conduct research. The new
campus provided a massive improvement to UAEU’s
information technology infrastructure, which directly
connects the campus to information stores. This
modern and robust infrastructure has given the UAEU
the ability to; consolidate multiple services, enhance
business efficiency, improve reporting, and empower
users with new self-service options.
The new campus backbone network was enhanced
to 10 gigabits per second. This major infrastructure
improvement enabled faster data flow through the
campus network, facilitating data-intensive services
for research, communications, and university
business.
Going Green
UAEU’s increased attention to green IT has resulted
from rising energy costs, increased publicity
regarding global warming, and increased legislation.
This initiative has taken an aggressive approach to
server/services virtualization, a move towards cloud
computing, and power management automation to
calibrate the costs of consumption and redundancy
against the risk of downtime.
Cloud Computing
This year the UAEU introduced a few cloud services
including; an internal private cloud computing
infrastructure for classroom and desktop technology,
lifelong email services for UAEU Alumni, and
connectivity to the Ankabut network.
Infrastructure
With the changes in the network architecture and
topology, the UAEU obtained; a high speed/bandwidth
fiber core network, transparent access to the Internet
and Ankabut across the entire university network,
and better internet connectivity by eliminating WAN
bottlenecks.
The University IT Services (UITS) worked with
vendors and contractors to design and build the core
data center on the new campus and with its modularity
to take up to 600 servers, the consumption of power
and cooling can be adjusted as needed making it a
“green�? data center.
Alumni Email Solution
UITS successfully and seamlessly moved around
30,000 on premises mailboxes with data to Live@
Edu. This migration to Live@Edu was very successful
and makes the UAEU an unique educational institute
in this region.
Connecting to Ankabut
In fulfilling its mandate of transforming into a research
institution, the UAEU connected its data network to
other countries Research and Education Networks
(REN). Linking the UAE REN (Ankabut) now allows
anybody on the internal UAEU network to access other
countries REN. To do this, approval was required from
Etisalat to use a different routing protocol with the
UAEU subsequently obtaining its own IPv6 subnets.
Other Technological Transformations
Additional projects implemented by UITS during 2010/
2011 included; the deployment of VoIP hardware,
upgrading of the wired and wireless networks of
FMHS and Tawam housing, the development of an
in-house IT monitoring system, and the introduction of
an eFax service.
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