Mosaic Blog

As many of you know, there was an internal search for the implementation director for the campus solutions piece of the enterprise systems replacement project, now officially, if not affectionately, referred to as The Mosaic Project...

Suellyn Hull and I are now co-directors of the Campus Solutions part of the Mosaic Project.

So there.

Arizona Campus Community,

Thank you for visiting our project blog. Let me introduce myself...

I'm Derek Masseth, the Sr. Director of Infrastructure Services. I report to Michele Norin, the Chief Information Officer for the University. I am responsible for the University's computing and communications infrastructure. As part of the Enterprise System Replacement Project, Michele has asked me to recommend an approach to hosting our new servers and managing our new application software. She challenged me to make the discovery and assessment process transparent and to broadly engage the Arizona campus community. She also asked that I examine the paths that our peers in Flagstaff and Tempe followed.

That review did not provide a clear precedent. NAU chose to host and manage their servers and applications on campus in Flagstaff. When they chose their path eight years ago, there weren't really any alternatives on the market. They have been successful, are happy with their approach, and don't have any near term plans to change their direction. ASU followed a different path. As part of a larger strategic approach to prioritizing IT work and costs in Tempe, ASU chose to contract with a third party to host and manage their PeopleSoft applications. Similar to NAU, they have generally been happy with the outcome and plan to continue to extend this strategy when possible.

Leaders from NAU and ASU were available in the Gallagher Theatre last Wednesday from 3-5 for our Hosting Townhall discussion. Fred Estrella (NAU VP and CITO), Max Davis-Johnson (ASU AVP of IT), and Adrian Sannier (ASU VP and CTO) answered questions for two hours from an audience of roughly 150. Fred, Max, and Adrian were candid, and their comments were very insightful. Notes from that discussion will be available under the 'Public Documents' link to the left of this post.