Fran Foo | May 27, 2008
cio files | Rob Cook
ARMED with nearly 18 years of experience at BHP Billiton, Rob Cook is introducing cutting-edge technology at Victoria's La Trobe University.
Rob Cook says free webmail isn't the answer Picture: David Crosling
When he started out as a metrological engineer, social networks and internet video were pretty well unknown to technology departments.
As chief information officer at La Trobe, Cook has to strike a balance between controlling expenditure and purchasing or introducing new technology. "As everyone knows in higher education there are perennial challenges to do with funding."
On joining the university in 2005 he embarked on a mission to tighten up, but that doesn't mean La Trobe hasn't been spending on technology.
"One of the problems was a 37-year-old data centre that had no proper backup facilities," he says.
Work on a proposal to rip out and replace the entire data centre began about two years ago. Cook got the green light in September, and earlier this year La Trobe was the proud owner of a spanking new data centre, with redundancy systems to boot.
"We've got diesel generator backup, N+1 redundancy and the university now knows we can deliver around the clock every day.
"We also have more efficient power and cooling systems," he says. Hewlett-Packard won the contract to design and construct the data centre for an undisclosed sum.
Although the new data centre was more than 24 months in the making, it was a more straightforward issue than the ever-growing internet bill, which now sits at $750,000 per year.
With the boom in social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, keeping up with the students is a daunting task.
The amount of chat and images viewed and uploaded has created a new category of problems for all universities, not just La Trobe, Cook says. "We're keeping a close eye on bandwidth." Like most universities, La Trobe pays AARNet (Australia's Academic and Research Network) a yearly subscription for bandwidth.
"Our fee to AARNet is about $750,000 for about 30,000-odd users. When you break that up, it doesn't sound that much but it's a growing bill.
"All universities are fairly resource-constrained so every saving helps," he says. La Trobe's annual IT budget is in the millions. One move Cook has ruled out, for the moment, is imposing quotas to rein in bandwidth costs.
"Some universities have bandwidth quotas for staff and students. We don't apply quotas but we do monitor usage and charge out to faculties," he says.
On the one hand, La Trobe doesn't want to pay AARNet any more than it already is, but on the other it can't block certain sites simply because they're popular.
"We certainly don't block Facebook. We block almost nothing.
"We're starting to look at ways to control internet usage but the web is a major resource for students and teaching staff, so the question is how much control you put in place and what type of controls are enforced. It's a very fine line. There are no easy answers."
Cook has also been busy putting in place a proper email archiving system.
"People use email for electronic archiving. They keep everything forever in their inboxes and it has got out of control."
Mailboxes have become bloated as users refuse to regularly delete their emails. This problem isn't unique to La Trobe but Cook had to act fast.
After a long evaluation Symantec Enterprise Vault was selected for email archiving purposes, he says.
If email management is such a headache, would following in the footsteps of NSW's Macquarie University - which uses Google's Gmail for student email - help?
That's a firm no, says Cook. "There are many issues related to not just Gmail but all web-based services such as this."
There's too much sensitive information going over its email networks to rely on an outsider.
"For example, we deliver student results by email. We can't afford for anything to go wrong. Who would be liable if something did?"
He also cites the matter of regulatory frameworks.
"The university doesn't have things like Sarbanes Oxley, but if it ever comes you really need a reliable way of capturing emails for evidence purposes. I don't know how you'd do that with something like Gmail, Hotmail or the others.
"These issues need to be really thought through before you can go down that free, webmail path."
One question constantly on Cook's mind is how to push the envelope with existing applications and he has his sights on videoconferencing.
"We all know how popular YouTube is and how much it's used by our students but how do we use the popularity of videos in our lessons?
"Many years ago a lot of the teaching delivery was whiteboards and projectors. Today we operate across six campuses so we have to rely on technology to deliver lessons."
The university churns out about 2000 hours of videoconferencing a year, he says, and it is growing by about 20 per cent annually.
Lecture rooms have a combination of Tandberg and Polycom videoconferencing equipment but Cook says he's thinking of the future.
"At the moment that gives the standard, commercial-type videoconferencing quality but all that is going to change as we start moving into high-definition television quality."
A motivating factor for investigating new new applications is the increase in part-time students from remote areas.
"With more people studying part-time because they're time-poor you have to start thinking about new delivery mechanisms.
"Providing higher education to all parts of Victoria is very important to us and we can't do it without technology."