Initiatives
In the interconnected world we live in, the computer network has become the heart of large complex organizations like the Health Sciences Center. Network connectivity is so integral in everything we do that an hour of downtime a couple years ago does not even begin to compare to an hour-long outage today. We all take it for granted and do not understand how important the network has become until we have an outage.
The current network was deployed in the late 1990s and it has reached the end of its useful life. Additionally, the Health Sciences Center's demand for bandwidth has grown exponentially during that time. When the current infrastructure was initially implemented, we only had approximately 3,500 users on the network and 10Mbp of bandwidth was more than enough. Today, the user base has grown to over 6,000 and, with nearly all business at the HSC being conducted online, bandwidth availability is even more important.
In order to better serve our internal customers, the Health Sciences Center has initiated a project to replace the current network with a state-of-the-art network. This new network will be more secure and will increase network performance by providing ten times more bandwidth to our students, faculty, and staff. Our wireless network will also be upgraded to provide five times more bandwidth for our mobile needs. Additionally, new elements of the security infrastructure are being deployed to protect our critical electronic resources from the ever-present threat from cyber attacks.
We anticipate the project will be completed by the end of 2007. The network infrastructure upgrade is an expensive and complex project, but it is one that is necessary in order to deliver these significantly enhanced services to our Institution in a seamless way.
We will keep you informed of our progress and look forward to working with many of you in the coming months. When the project is completed, we will have the information system highway we need to meet the very demanding needs of the Health Sciences Center for the next several years.
Michael T. Phillips
Chief Information Officer