URBANA – Suggestions for restructuring information technology functions at the Urbana campus could result in more than $10 million in savings for the University of Illinois, according to a report released by the UI Thursday.

The information technology budget review team is one of 15 formed in February to look at efficiences in mostly smaller units at the Urbana campus.

The report also suggests outsourcing some functions, using less expensive-to-maintain hardware and a unified communications system.

The report notes that consolidating smaller server rooms into large data centers to save power, administration effort and space, for a potential $4.38 million in savings; accelerating the campus adoption of internet telephones into Microsoft Unified Communications, which includes calendaring, e-mail and licensing, saving $3.3 million; creating a coordinated environment for campus unit web management to avoid duplication of effort and resources, for about $3 million.

Further work on an outsourcing plan for IT could save as much as 20 percent, the report suggested.

The full report is available online in pdf format.

at http://oc.illinois.edu/budget/it_project_team_report.pdf

John Hart, the head of the review team, said in an email to The News-Gazette that the experience was positive.

"I was very impressed with the selection of members for the committee that I was assigned, especially its combination of faculty and staff, and I hope the campus can continue to draw on this group's expertise and insight to continue the process of ensuring IT remains efficient and cost-effective for the foreseeable future.

"Some of our recommendations are already being effected and implemented, as they endorsed and accelerated activities already begun with the campus IT@Illinois campaign. Some of the other recommendations have very compelling savings and motivations and so I would hope to see them implemented as well."

The report also suggests replacing staff and lab desktop PCs with easier-to-maintain "thin clients," saving $1 million; creating a working group to coordinate IT purchasing, leasing and trade-ins; coordinating unit-level business process development to avoid redundancy; and studying ways to safeguard the security of data, "as will soon be overwhelmingly necessary to maintain funding levels."

Hart said "thin clients are more like terminals than stand-alone computers. A thin client provides a display, keyboard and mouse and other interfaces, but runs applications remotely on a server. One server computer can run applications for many "thin clients' (like terminals). The main benefit of this is that the system administrators can maintain one server a lot easier and more cheaply than a bunch of individual desktop PCs, and the difference between a desktop PC and a thin clientfor most business operations is negligible."

In May, CITES will begin outsourcing student email. By the middle of the month, incoming undergraduate students (freshmen and transfers) will be notified how to set up a Google Apps@ Illinois account and choose where to send their @illinois.edu email.

They can used Google applications, Microsoft Live, or both.

Dan Jacobsohn, the director of Application Services at CITES, said in an email that "Outsourcing student email was one of the recommendations of the Campus Email and Calendaring Committee. CITES must retire Express Email by the end of 2010, so this is an ideal time to work with campus to determine how best to serve the needs of students, faculty, and staff about email and other services, like calendaring."