Information and-communications-technologies-ict-strategic2439

Information and Communications
Technologies
(ICT) Strategic Plan: 2006 - 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................1
SETTING AND SCOPE ........................................................................................................................................2
University Strategic Planning.....................................................................................................................2
The ICT Planning Pyramid.........................................................................................................................2
An Information-centric approach ...............................................................................................................3
Principles.....................................................................................................................................................3
Monash University IT Architecture ............................................................................................................4
RESEARCH ICT INFRASTRUCTURE ...................................................................................................................5
Overview .....................................................................................................................................................5
Strategic Initiative: E-Research programme.............................................................................................6
Strategic Initiative: Research Administration............................................................................................7
EDUCATION ICT INFRASTRUCTURE ..................................................................................................................8
Overview .....................................................................................................................................................8
Strategic Initiative: Learning Management ...............................................................................................9
Strategic Initiative: Teaching and Learning Spaces...............................................................................10
Strategic Initiative: Educational Technology Innovation ........................................................................11
INTERNATIONAL ICT INFRASTRUCTURE ..........................................................................................................12
Overview ...................................................................................................................................................12
ADMINISTRATION ICT INFRASTRUCTURE ........................................................................................................13
Overview ...................................................................................................................................................13
Strategic Initiative: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) .....................................................................14
Strategic Initiative: Student Management System .................................................................................15
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT ICT INFRASTRUCTURE......................................................................................16
Overview ...................................................................................................................................................16
Strategic Initiative: Web technologies/Web strategy..............................................................................17
Strategic Initiative: Web technologies/Portal platform ...........................................................................18
Strategic Initiative: Management information/Business intelligence & KPI ..........................................19
Strategic Initiative: Workgroup Collaboration Support...........................................................................20
ICT CORE INFRASTRUCTURE .........................................................................................................................21
Overview ...................................................................................................................................................21
Strategic Initiative: Data Centres.............................................................................................................22
Strategic Initiative: Cabled Data Network ...............................................................................................23
Strategic Initiative: Wireless Data Network.............................................................................................24
Strategic Initiative: Internet Services.......................................................................................................25
Strategic Initiative: Telephone Services..................................................................................................26
Strategic Initiative: Host Server Platforms ..............................................................................................27
Strategic Initiative: Data Storage Management......................................................................................28
Strategic Initiative: Workstation Infrastructure........................................................................................29
Strategic Initiative: Security......................................................................................................................30
Strategic Initiative: Application Integration..............................................................................................31
Strategic Initiative: Identity Management and Authentication Systems................................................32

1
INTRODUCTION
This document is the University Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Strategic Plan.
This document is a considered response to the evolving University Strategic Planning methodology. It
replaces the existing 2001 IT Strategic Base Plan, which has to date been a successful vehicle for
driving improvements in ICT infrastructure and service delivery.
The University Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Strategic Plan (this document) is
part of a new University Information and Communications Technology (ICT) planning pyramid (see
figure 1 on the following page). The structure of the pyramid has been designed to mesh in with the
university’s new planning methodology and planning timelines. The university has a series of long-
term direction statements (Monash 2025 – 20 years, and the Academic Plan – 5+5 years). This
document addresses the first half of the Academic Plan time schedule (the next five years). This is for
two reasons. Firstly, the pace of technological change is such that it would be difficult to try to plan
further out than that. Secondly, the components of the Academic Plan are structured as two five year
periods with an implied review step. Planning for ICT for the next five years is consistent with this.
The document is focused on Information and Communications Technology Infrastructure.
Infrastructure can be defined in many ways. Perhaps the most useful definition is that infrastructure is
what is generally required in order for the university to function. Information and Communications
Technology Infrastructure is a subset of this. Some ICT Infrastructure is largely invisible to most users,
in the same way that electricity-generating capacity is to consumers. This includes areas such as
server hosting, storage provision, and voice/data networks and many underpinning software systems.
Other infrastructure is only visible to a small and specialized subset of the university community. This
includes areas such as research administration, student management and enterprise resource
planning (HR and Finance). Lastly, some infrastructure is a fundamental platform for everything the
university does. Examples here include the collaboration environment and the components of the web
strategy.
This document summarises the most critical strategic activities (which are by no means all that is
underway) in the ICT space using a new concise and business-focused format. This format:
 Provides an overview of the business driver for this strategic activity
 Outlines the benefits expected from investment in this area
 Identifies which stakeholders would be expected to provide leadership
 Lists the investments required over the life of the document (2006-2010)
 Summarises the status of activity so far.
This document will be reviewed annually on a rolling five-year basis. Particular strategic initiatives will
be added and subtracted as dictated by the changing strategic environment and priorities of the
university.
It is hoped that this new approach will be useful both to university senior decision makers and to those
charged with managing ICT systems across the university.
The Information Technology Services Division commends this document for consideration by the
University.

2
SETTING AND SCOPE
University Strategic Planning
Figure 1 : University Planning Pyramid
Monash University has a well-organised and coherent planning structure, summarized in the planning
pyramid. Most importantly, the various components of the Academic Plan now provide clear
statements of direction for the research, education and international portfolios. The challenge for the
service divisions is how best to respond to and support these statements of direction.
The ICT Planning Pyramid
Figure 2: ICT Planning Pyramid

3
The ICT Planning Pyramid (Figure 2) has been designed to focus on applications and infrastructure
and to complement the University Planning Pyramid, relating to its lower two layers. The ICT Planning
Pyramid itself has a number of layers. At the top level is this ICT Strategic Plan. This is explicitly
structured to respond to the identified priorities in the various components of the Academic Plan
(research, education and international) and the activities that are necessary to support these
(information management, administration, and infrastructure). Below these in turn sit the ITS
Operational Plan and the ITS Departmental Plans. These shorter-term documents then drive individual
staff performance plans.
A number of ITS internal planning documents (Service Roadmaps, Portfolio Roadmaps, IT Risk
Profile) feed into the planning framework and inform the resulting ICT Strategic Plan.
The ability to deliver against the ICT Strategic Plan is strongly influenced by staff capacity across the
university, the impact of shared services, the need to maintain existing services and IT governance
arrangements.
An Information-centric approach
This ICT Strategic Plan takes an explicitly information-centric
approach, based on the work of the information management steering
committee. The Monash University Information Management Strategy
was developed by a cross-university steering committee containing
representatives of the major information stakeholders (ITS, Library,
Records & Archives, University Planning, faculty managers, Faculty of
Information Technology experts) and published in 2005. At the 2005
University Planning Conference, it was endorsed as one of the 2006
University Key Priorities.
The strategy emphasises the importance of information-centric
technology solutions, focussed on the user and their information
needs. Figure 3 represents this diagrammatically. At the top is the
user and their information needs. These are supported by services,
delivered by applications, running on infrastructure. The Information
Management Strategy deals primarily with the upper three levels of
this figure. This ICT Strategic Plan deals with the lower two levels,
and is focussed on the applications and infrastructure.
The strategy also divides the activity of the University into a number
of realms. The three most significant realms are research, education
and administration. These are major sections in this ICT Strategic
Plan. This plan also picks up some of the most critical information
management implementation activities.
Figure 3: Info-
centric technology
Principles
The deployment of ICT Infrastructure is guided by two sets of principles.
Information Management Principles
These principles are taken from the Monash University Information Management Strategy
(http://www.monash.edu.au/staff/information-management/). They define how information is managed
at the university, and are focused on the content, not the systems. Note that principle 10 implies the
need for the information management principles to determine the deployment of ICT.
1. Corporate importance
Information is a valued resource and Monash's strategic and operational plans define how it
should be used and managed.
2. Information sources
Because we manage information, it can be easily found, and its source reliably identified.

4
3. User-centeredness
The information services and systems at Monash are designed and provided with the needs of
users in mind.
4. Availability
Information is available to anybody, anytime, anywhere and anyhow as appropriate.
5. Staff and student development
We continuously improve our skills in working with information.
6. Productivity and efficiency
Because we manage information, we are more productive as a community.
7. Statutory requirements
The way we manage information complies with legal and administrative requirements.
8. Trustworthy information and systems
Monash information is relevant, accurate and timely.
9. Retention and disposal
We keep the right information for Monash and the wider community.
10. Information and technology
Our information needs are supported by our Information and Communication Technology services
and systems.
IT Architecture Principles
These principles are described more fully in the Monash University IT Architecture
(http://www.its.monash.edu.au/staff/plans/architecture/). They define the desired characteristics of the
systems that manage information, as well as the infrastructure that underpins those systems.
1. University strategic objectives guide IT decisions.
2. Systems are secure.
3. Designs target high availability and reliability.
4. Systems safeguard privacy and intellectual property.
5. Systems use the authoritative source for data.
6. Open Standards are used where possible.
7. Platform-independent user environments are globally accessible.
8. Purchased software is preferred to in-house development.
9. Standard products and platforms are adopted to limit diversity.
10. Applications share hardware platforms.
11. Systems are structured for easy extension.
12. Management of systems is easy to devolve.
Monash University IT Architecture
The Monash University IT Architecture (MITA) was first published in 2004 and was revised in 2005. At
its most basic level, MITA is a framework to identify and reuse successful technology and process
patterns (across the division and the University). The architecture is based on recommendations from
The Open Group Architecture Framework. It includes a business architecture, an information
architecture, and application architecture, and a technical infrastructure architecture. Each of these in
turn has a series of subsections defining standards to be followed.
The architecture aims to deliver three benefits. One is to identify “win-win” opportunities that will in turn
result in reduced work by ICT staff through removing duplication or inefficiency in the provision of ICT
systems. Another is to generate increased reuse of technology through improved communication and
collaboration. The third is to enable the IT services to respond more quickly to changes in university
information requirements. A process for the ongoing maintenance of MITA is being put in place at
present, as well as a communication strategy to publicise it widely within the university. This ICT
Strategic Plan draws together all four ‘architectures’ in arriving at its recommended strategic initiatives.
Compliance with the Monash University IT Architecture will also be critical to the success of these
initiatives as they are rolled out.

5
RESEARCH ICT INFRASTRUCTURE
Overview
A primary goal of Monash is to be a leading research-intensive university. High quality ICT
infrastructure is key to this strategy. In particular, Monash seeks to improve its research performance
through the more effective harnessing and application of ICT technologies. At the same time, DEST is
working to improve the sector’s research productivity through the adoption of a national e-Research
strategy; by improving the accessibility and preservation of research data and information; and
through the improved management of research activities and resources for research through the
adoption of the Research Quality Framework (RQF).
Monash is commissioning an array of medical and micro imaging systems during the planning horizon.
Nearby the Australian Synchrotron comes on-stream in the same period. All of these major new
instruments will generate research data at unprecedented rates. The strength and calibre of Monash’s
Library, IT Services Division and Faculty of IT, and the reputation of key senior staff in those areas has
placed Monash in a key position to contribute to the leadership of Australia’s national e-Research
initiative.
In 2005 the University established the Monash e-Research Centre to further these aims and activities,
the first such centre of its kind in Australia. In so doing the University has indicated the increasing
importance and priority for funding of ICT support for Monash’s research programme. The University’s
strategy for ICT infrastructure in support of Monash University’s research programme is in five parts:
Researcher-centric tools, applications, support and advice
Provide professional ICT consulting and specialized support services for research by placing ICT
professionals to work directly alongside key researchers. Provide a place/resource for researchers to
turn to obtain specialist ICT support and advice. Develop discipline-specific ICT tools and applications.
Develop an easy-to-use one-stop-shop environment where all the tools and facilities a researcher
needs are all in one place (researchers’ desktop or portal).
Information repository, cataloguing and curation systems
Develop and provide information management systems and tools to facilitate the cataloguing,
searching, archival and curation of research databases, information and publications.
Research collaboration
Develop and provide systems and tools to enable researchers to collaborate across institutions and
disciplines; share access to research data in a secure and controlled manner; workgroup collaboration
systems and communications services; access to distributed and remote ICT and computational
facilities, databases and scientific instruments; including federated identity management systems.
Physical infrastructure
Provide high capacity and integrated central ICT infrastructure (network, storage and compute)
capacity and integrate with local departmental compute and storage systems.
Management information systems
Continue to improve the various administrative, record keeping, statistics and tracking systems and
processes that support the management and administration of Monash’s research programme. A
particular focus for 2006-2007 is to develop tools to administer the RQF. The business intelligence
strategic initiative, including the development of a Business Intelligence Strategy (see p. 19), is a key
component of this.

6
Strategic Initiative: E-Research programme
Monash is well placed to contribute to the leadership of, and to benefit from, the development and
implementation of Australia’s national e-Research strategy. This strategy seeks to improve research
performance through the improved use of ICT; improved research collaboration across disciplines and
and institutions; and improved access to distributed and remote ICT facilities, databases and scientific
instruments.
The Monash e-Research initiative has been created to complement and extend national initiatives in
this area. e-Research at Monash will facilitate the development and provision of the following
e-Research infrastructure and services:
 Information management and curation: Research data repository and information management
and curation services (ARROW (http://arrow.edu.au/), DART (http://dart.edu.au/) and ARCHER
(http://archer.edu.au/) projects)
 Embedded ICT professionals working directly with researchers: Researcher-centric ICT
tools, custom applications and consulting and support services; one-stop-shop researchers’
desktop environment (MeRP and VeRSI projects)
 Grid middleware suite: Software environment to support research collaboration and harnessing
of distributed ICT facilities and databases; including federated identity management,
authentication and authorization systems
 Physical infrastructure: Integration of departmental and central compute and storage facilities,
together with the provision of large central research data store and compute capability (MCG,
MSG and LaRDS projects)
Benefits
 Improve Monash’s research output through
improved use of ICT
 Improve research collaboration across
disciplines and institutions locally
nationally and internationally
 Improve the accessibility and preservation
of research data
 Reduce incidence of lost data and reduce
cost by providing improved central data
storage and information
management/curation services
 Support an array of medical and micro
imaging facilities currently being
established around Monash
 Improve productivity of Monash
researchers by providing ICT professionals
to work directly with researchers (improve
effective utilization of ICT facilities; develop
discipline-specific custom applications;
provide advice, training and professional
consulting services)
 Improve accessibility of ICT tools to
Monash researchers
 Maximize benefits to Monash research
flowing from the Australian Synchrotron.
Proposed leadership
 Deputy Vice Chancellor Research
 e-Research Steering Committee
 Director, e-Research Centre
 Manager, e-Research Centre
 Executive Director, ITS
 Director Infrastructure Services, ITS.
Estimated investments/funding sources
External funds:
• DEST (ARROW+ARROW2): $8M
• DEST (DART+ARCHER): $7.8M
• DEST (LIEF 2006+2007): $0.5M
• MMV (VeRSI): $2.4M.
Monash funds:
• Strategic Initiatives: $2M
• MeRC (total over 3 years): $1.8M.
Status to date (June 2006)
 ARROW implemented and in use
 MSG central compute facility
commissioned 2005; and 2006 hardware
expansion works complete
 LaRDS research data store: 60 TB disk
and SAN commissioned
 MCG concept and steering committee
formed
 MeRP concept and steering committee
formed
 DART in progress
 VeRSI proposal accepted and funded
 ARROW2 and ARCHER proposals
approved
 LIEF2007 proposal submitted.

7
Strategic Initiative: Research Administration
High quality administrative, management and information systems are key to Monash’s strategy to be
a leading research-intensive university. This project builds on two complementary developments. The
first is the advances that have been made in the last 2 years developing new administrative functions.
The second are the systems and procedures that support the university’s researchers as well as their
supporting administration staff.
The work scheduled for the planning horizon is a compilation of initiatives including systems and data
integration developments to support the RQF, removal of inappropriate database and spreadsheet
usage, business intelligence reporting on research data and the further development of profiling
software. This profiling software can then be utilised to pre-populate administrative forms which in turn
contain in-built workflows. This should speed up the application processes for a number of university
research systems.
Benefits
 Reliable, high quality information on
research performance at an individual,
department/school, faculty and university
level
 Increase in research funding and
collaborative research projects by
providing a consistent and useable
interface to prospective research partners
 Contribute to an overall improvement in
the Monash image
 Increase in research funding due to ability
to model RQF information more easily than
competitors
 Reduction in academic time spent on
bureaucratic requirements, and therefore
more time for core academic and research
related business
 Improved facilities for the entry,
maintenance and retrieval of data
 More timely production of reports
 Large reduction time and effort in keying
research related data
 Minimisation or elimination of large
amounts of double-handling of data
 Reduction in the amount of time spent by
researchers on completing administration
forms
 Less time spent by researchers in finding
out the resources and expertise within the
university that relates to proposed
research activities.
Leadership
 Research Administration Steering
Committee
 Director Research Services
 Pro-Vice Chancellor Research and
Research Training
 Director Applications Services, ITS.
Estimated Investments/Funding Sources
 2007: $448K Strategic Initiatives fund
 2008: Possible replacement of RM4 with
InfoEd software: up to $5M from the
Strategic Initiatives Fund
 2007 - 2008: Implementation of the BI
Strategy (cost to be determined)
 2009: ongoing costs absorbed into
operational and production budgets of V-P
Research and ITS Division
 Ongoing work to develop and maintain
appropriate standards and procedures
relating to systems administration and
support (cost to be determined).
Status to Date (June 2006)
 ROPES system developed and operational
 Animal Ethics module implemented on
RM4
 RQF Information system developed and
operational
 Work commenced on replacing MRGS
Access databases with Application
Express programs linked to Callista
 Work commenced on Staff Profiling
system.

8
EDUCATION ICT INFRASTRUCTURE
Overview
The vision for the Monash Education portfolio is to provide students with a rich and diverse online
learning environment that augments the traditional learning context. The my.monash portal provides a
unified point of access to a comprehensive suite of web-based learning resources, materials and
activities including the Monash University Studies Online (MUSO) environment.
Teaching staff will have access to a suite of online teaching tools which will support a strategic
diversity of pedagogical approaches. The 2006 review of the MUSO environment made a number of
recommendations about the future of the service. The enterprise learning management system will be
augmented with a suitable and appropriate range of systems which in combination will support
innovative, but proven, approaches to facilitate the student’s achievement of their learning objectives.
There are a number of central service providers from across the university which together provide the
following:
 lecture notes – in downloadable transcript and in various audio and video formats (for example;
streaming, pod-casting);
 activities – the variety of learning material creation tools enable both learner directed and teacher
directed activities which can be delivered in various formats (from simple discussion and report,
replaying a ‘whiteboard’ based illustration, through to instructional video and interactive ‘learning’
games) to cater for differing learning styles;
 self assessment tools – enabling students to gain an understanding of their grasp on material,
predominantly via quizzes and tests;
 reading lists – provided predominantly via the Library, and contributed to by individual academics,
these resources point students in the direction of further online information relating to specific
topics; and,
 discussion/collaboration forums (inclusive of presence and chat) – enabling students to capitalise
on the diversity of Monash’s globally located and connected students, their experiences and
perspectives.
Multi-faceted contributions from students irrespective of campus/study location will be greatly
facilitated as a result of the implementation of the forthcoming enterprise collaboration suite – enabling
secure and simple mechanisms for students to discuss and debate issues, to create group
assignments and to participate in the social elements of learning – the cornerstone of Monash’s
unique learning experience.
Incorporation of additional learning elements will be dependent upon both innovation in technology
and creativity in the cost effective application of this technology. Elements will be selected for
evaluation against pedagogical and IT architectural criteria, and those deemed successful will then be
progressively resourced and deployed.
Where appropriate, MUSO will be integrated with various other corporate systems (student information
system, timetabling system, mailing lists and the like) to bring about efficiencies in the administration,
creation and maintenance of teaching activities.
In support of the traditional learning context, learning venues on all Monash campuses will continue to
be maintained and the ICT replaced and/or upgraded in response to prevailing teaching and learning
requirements.
Mechanisms and processes to evaluate the efficacy and quality of teaching activities and the systems
that these depend upon will be regularly conducted (via the unit evaluation process) and strategic and
targeted improvements and refinements will be undertaken.

9
Strategic Initiative: Learning Management
The goal of the Learning Management strategic initiative is to continue to provide students and staff
with a quality online environment through which learning and teaching activities can be conducted.
During the 2006 – 2010 timeframe it is intended that the Monash University Studies Online (MUSO)
service will broaden under the direction of the Learning Management Steering Committee, to include
a comprehensive and complementary suite of Learning Management Systems (LMS) within Monash.
Currently, the enterprise LMS in use is the Blackboard product, WebCT Vista. Additionally there are a
number of niche products in use at Monash including InterLearn, LEX, Walkabout and the my.monash
unit pages.
Activities anticipated in the learning management space within the 2006 – 2010 timeframe include:
 the establishment of guidelines to facilitate a watching brief on alternate enterprise LMS (this is a
risk mitigation strategy in order to provide a viable exit strategy from the Blackboard product);
 consideration/evaluation of the various LMS products currently in use within Monash with the
overall aim of incorporating these into one coherent MUSO service; and,
 planning, evaluation and execution of regularly (once every 18 months for the foreseeable future)
scheduled upgrades to the enterprise LMS.
Benefits
 the provision of a unified online education
environment – making it easier and simpler
for students to participate in learning
activities and making a wider range of
educational tools available for staff to
deploy as appropriate.
Proposed leadership
 Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor
 Director, Centre for the Advancement of
Learning and Teaching
 Educational Technology sub-committee of
Education Committee
 Learning Management System Steering
Committee
 2007: additional operational funding of
$779K in order to continue operating the
WebCT Vista product and $510K Strategic
Initiative funding for the planning and pilot
of version 4 of Vista.
 2008: ongoing operational expenditure
from ITS Operational budget and $380K in
capital funding to roll-out Vista 4 across
the organisation
 2009: as above
 2010: as above.
 Roll-out of the enterprise LMS project
complete with all objectives met
 Establishment of the Education
Technology sub-committee of the
Education Committee to oversee and drive
Learning Management initiatives
 MUSO Review complete.

10
Strategic Initiative: Teaching and Learning Spaces
The university conducts in the order of 70,000 teaching sessions per year in a variety of centrally
timetabled and managed teaching spaces. To provide a contemporary and high quality teaching and
learning experience, it is important that teaching spaces are designed with appropriate educational
technology equipment.
There are 160 centrally managed and 110 Faculty owned teaching spaces at Australian campuses
fitted out with educational technology infrastructure and a further 260 smaller teaching spaces
(excluding specialist labs etc). This investment in educational technology is managed through a
consultative process by the ITS Teaching Facilities Support Unit. In the past 5 years, there has been a
considerable increase in demand for technology enabled smaller teaching spaces, and the
construction of new buildings such as Building H at Caulfield. There are significant annual
maintenance costs of refreshing the educational technology across the entire stock of teaching spaces
(the total investment in teaching spaces at Australian campuses over the last 3 years has been over
$5M).
There is a 3-5 year (average of 4 years) refurbishment cycle to refresh technology components of
teaching spaces eg, data projectors, lecterns. Infrastructure related costs such as cabling and
electrical wiring also need to be included to ensure that these teaching spaces are maintained at an
acceptable standard.
In addition to these teaching spaces, the university is also progressively developing learning commons
(sometimes referred to as learning spaces). These spaces are a collaborative initiative between ITS
and the Library to provide flexible locations which enable collaborative learning, supported through co-
located student service desks.
Benefits
 Assists in the provision of a high quality
learning experience by ensuring high
quality teaching spaces are fitted out with
appropriate educational technology
 Maintains the stock of teaching spaces to
a contemporary standard in a planned and
consultative way
 Encourages efficiency of usage of teaching
spaces.
 Assists provision of Monash Lectures on
Line.
 Provides for assistive hearing technology
in teaching spaces.
Proposed leadership
 Campus Directors and Managers
 Director Client Services, ITS
 Managers, Facilities and Services at each
campus
 Consultative groups already established at
most campuses.
 2006 - $400K ITS Budget
 2006 - $170K Minor Works budget
 2006 - $850K Capital Works
 2010 - $500K ITS Budget.
 Building H at Caulfield completed. In future
expect to include maintenance in ITS
expenditure
 Berwick – 5 teaching spaces refurbished
 Caulfield – 5 teaching spaces refurbished
 Clayton – 16 teaching spaces refurbished
 Gippsland – 3 teaching spaces refurbished
 Peninsula – 1 teaching space refurbished
 15-20 teaching spaces still to be
refurbished in 2006
 Learning Commons operational at
Berwick; further spaces planned for
Malaysia and South Africa.
.

11
Strategic Initiative: Educational Technology Innovation
The university has been at the forefront of innovation in the use of educational technologies. Our
university wide adoption of WebCT Vista (branded as Monash University Studies Online) is one
example of this. Another is the extremely successful Monash Lectures Online
(http://www.mulo.monash.edu.au/) which is a recorded lecture service piloted by ITS and now hosted
by Monash University Library to deliver digital audio recordings of lectures to Monash University
students via the Internet.
There are a range of trends that require continued innovative strategic responses. One of these is
improvements in educational technologies, which are likely to continue over the planning timeframe
and beyond. Another is the increasing expectations of each new student intake, based on their school
experience or exposure through the Internet to related technologies. A third is the university’s
emphasis on student mobility and international exchanges. A fourth is a move towards more
collaborative and media-rich learning preferences and styles.
One of the responses is around governance. The Education Committee of Academic Board has just
established an Educational Technology Sub-Committee which will be developing an Educational
Technology Framework. This group will also be encouraging examples of best practice which will be
mainstreamed where they are successful. The university has also developed a Student Experience
Framework, to support the goals in this space that were identified in Monash Directions 2025.
Another response is to trial and (if successful deploy) new educational technologies. The Educational
Technologies strategic initiative consists of a number of inter-related activities that together will
advance the delivery of educational content and experiences. These current and future activities
include:
 Tele-teaching across campuses
 Trialling e-Portfolios for students
 Proposed extensions to Monash Lectures Online, including:
o MP3 downloading
o podcasting
 Pharmacy pilot implementation of the iLecture system which delivers integrated slides, audio,
video and notes
 Desktop video-conferencing for remote students
 Support for student mobility, including trialling delivery to mobile phones/PDAs
 Trialling in-class polling technologies (using wireless keypads).
Benefits
 Assists in the provision of a high quality
learning experience
 Supports the distributed Monash by
providing educational experiences
delivered at one campus to other
campuses
 Provides a better experience for off-
campus students
 Supports student mobility.
Proposed leadership
 Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor
 Director, Centre for the Advancement of
Learning and Teaching (CALT)
 Educational Technology Sub-Committee of
Education Committee
 Executive Director, ITS.
 To be determined.
 Pharmacy iLecture pilot scheduled for
2007
 MP3 download and podcasting trials
underway, to be reviewed late this year.

12
INTERNATIONAL ICT INFRASTRUCTURE
Overview
Monash University has just approved its International Plan, consisting of a discussion paper and an
international matrix. The plan identifies four key objectives:
1. Optimise the research, learning and teaching, community engagement and financial benefits from
our international partnerships
2. Optimise the research, learning and teaching, community engagement, and financial benefits from
our international campus and centre footprint
3. Enhance our research profile through new international presences
4. Foster the culture of internationalism amongst the broader Monash community
The strategic initiatives identified elsewhere in this strategic plan already respond to priorities in the
areas of research, and learning and teaching. But there are specific requirements identified in the
discussion paper that also require an ICT Infrastructure response.
The discussion paper emphasizes the importance of ‘One Monash’. ICT Infrastructure and services
need to be developed and provided in such a way as to deliver a consistent set of services to Monash
staff and students wherever they are located within ‘One Monash’. A number of the infrastructure
initiatives in this strategic plan relate directly to this, including improved network capacity between
campuses. Monash University South Africa will be increasing its link capacity outside the campus, and
pursuing a connection to TENET (the local higher education network). It will also be reconfiguring local
network equipment and introducing extranet traffic management to better utilize existing link capacity.
Monash University Malaysia will also be increasing capacity on its external network connection.
Another requirement in the discussion paper is to provide opportunities for those who are less mobile
due to family commitments or financial constraints for ‘virtual international experiences’ through ICT.
This will require as a minimum improved video-conferencing. An innovative approach that might also
be trialled is a network of web-enabled cameras at different Monash campuses to provide a sense of
activity across the university system.
The draft International Plan matrix identifies the need to improve the efficiency of staff communication
between campuses and centres international partners, increase the frequency and quality of e-
communication between campuses and centres, and to develop good quality e-learning connectivity
capacity between the campuses. This will require a greater emphasis on high-quality video-
conferencing (to replace the need for short duration trips between campuses), and on tele-teaching
and desktop video-conferencing. These are also flagged elsewhere in this strategic plan, and will
depend on investments in network infrastructure and a move towards Voice-over-IP (VOIP)
technologies.
In short, much of the infrastructure required to support the new international directions is either being
put in place or is already in the planning stage. As the international strategy is fine-tuned, ITS will
ensure that it responds to further align with its requirements.

13
ADMINISTRATION ICT INFRASTRUCTURE
Overview
Some applications have become so necessary to critical operations that they are now considered part
of the infrastructure. SAP for financial, human resource and asset management is one, as is Callista
for academic and student administration. The effective use of information technology in support of the
administrative functions of the University involves developing and nurturing partnerships with
administrative information owners and providers. These partnerships allow us to blend leading
commercial software with institution specific applications to meet the administrative needs of the
University.
SAP was implemented in 1999 and Callista in 2000. Since then a number of related applications have
been acquired or developed including;
• research administration
• timetabling and class booking
• flexible learning support systems for off-campus learning,
• course and unit publications
• student load planning and monitoring and
• core business evaluations.
These related applications depend to a large extent on the accuracy and currency of information in the
SAP and Callista systems. These integrated administrative applications are thus central to the
successful operation of core university functions.
Application integration and cross-application reporting are key issues for 2006 and beyond. Work has
commenced on replacing the legacy ‘point to point’ data-dependent application interfaces with a
contemporary solution based on information integration driven by business processes. This strong
base in our transaction-based systems will serve us well into the next decade, with the focus now
turning to reporting the information they contain for tactical and strategic purposes. The business
intelligence initiative launched in 2006 will produce a three to five year roadmap for harvesting and
presenting critical information for decision support.

14
Strategic Initiative: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Monash implemented SAP R/3 ERP software for financial and human resource/payroll administration
in 1999 to address the risks posed by Y2k and GST. Since the initial implementation of core product to
replace the legacy systems there has been a steady roll-out of new business functionality now
extending into asset administration and employee self-services.
Monash has remained within mainstream vendor support and has leveraged the financial investment
to date by upgrading the R/3 system in 2002, and in 2006 is at the forefront of implementing SAP
functionality and technology by migrating to SAP’s contemporary ERP solution, mySAP ERP. The
mySAP ERP licence gives Monash access to a full range of functionality not available in R/3, such as
Strategic Enterprise Management (strategic planning and simulation, business consolidation),
Corporate Services (real estate and travel management) and self service for financial and line
managers. mySAP is a packaged business solution designed to automate, integrate and standardise
business processes, share common data and provide real-time access to information. Support for
mySAP extends to at least 2012, meaning Monash will not have to revisit ERP market offerings for at
least five years.
Benefits
 Support for range of finance, HR/payroll
and self-service functions until at least
2012
 Ease of expansion /growth and increased
flexibility offered by mySAP licence
 Strategically leverages Monash’s
investment through implementation of
second wave functionality
 Streamlines transaction processing
through introduction of employee and
manager self-service and workflow
applications.
Proposed leadership
 Vice President Administration
 Vice President Finance and CFO
 2006: $1.3M of IT Capital funding for
licence conversion and mySAP
implementation costs, $725k of Operating
costs
 2007 – 2008: ongoing costs absorbed into
Operating/Production budgets of ITS,
CFD, FiRM, HR and end-user organisation
units
 2009 – 2010: Hardware replacement
scheduled, estimated $250K of capital
funding.
 SAP/Monash Licence and Support
Agreement re-negotiated
 SAP Upgrade Review completed (with
recommendations for migration and
expansion)
 Business Process Teams, Change
Management and Technical Teams
operating
 Infrastructure landscape for at least next 3
years established and operational
 MySAP ERP software installed and
Upgrade Project commenced.

15
Strategic Initiative: Student Management System
An effective student administration system is an essential component of the university administration
processes. The current student system, Callista, was selected in 1999 and implemented over two
years. Its current license and support contract expires in 2009. The university will need to decide
before then whether to renew the contract or implement an alternate system. Given the two year
implementation period the ideal time for the vendor selection and contract negotiation processes
would be 2007.
The final phase of DEST (Department of Education, Science and Training) reforms will be undertaken
in 2007. This will require changes to both the Callista systems and the Web Enrolment System. In
addition Monash will need to comply with other government reporting systems such as the Centrelink
Academic Reassessment Transformation (CART) system in the near future.
During 2006 Monash is evaluating the Callista Connect system that provides self-service functionality
via the web to students and staff. It is expected that some modules of the Connect system will be
implemented at Monash such as the fees module, online admissions access for prospective students
and agents and enhanced course progression reporting.
Benefits
 Provide robust and effective student
administration for the university
 Minimise the risk to the university
 Minimise cost
 Compliance with Government reporting
requirements
 Web based functionality for fees,
admissions, and course progression.
Proposed leadership
 Divisional Director, Student and
Community Services Division
 2007: $525K from Strategic Initiative fund
 2008-2009: Possible implementation of
another student system from Capital
budget. The investment is in the range
range $15M – $25M.
 Higher Education Support Act
implementation almost complete
 Callista Connect evaluation begun.

16
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT ICT INFRASTRUCTURE
Overview
Monash University faces a number of information-related challenges as it continues to move into the
21
st
Century:
• growth in the volume and complexity of information upon which the university depends
• an increasing number of information islands and information-centric applications
• convergence in digital content and media.
Information resources are as important as the university's other key assets – human, physical, and
financial. We have systems and structures in place to manage these key assets but our systems and
structures for managing information resources need attention. In order to excel the University needs to
improve the quality of its information management.
The implementation of the Monash University Information Management Strategy will be supported by
a communication plan as well as a work plan that is structured around four themes.
Working with information efficiently and effectively
This group of activities seeks to assist staff and students to improve their ability in working with
information. Particular sub-themes are staff development, classification, document and records
management, repositories and search and discovery. A 2006 funded project is well underway, tackling
some of the challenges in this space.
Delivering information and services to users using web technologies
This group of activities serves the delivery of online information and services, building on the existing
progress Monash has made in using web technologies. Particular sub-themes are the roles of the
public web, intranet technologies and solutions, and web content management. Two of the proposed
ICT strategic initiatives described below come under this theme: the web strategy and the portal
platform.
Providing high quality management information
This group of activities seeks to provide managers with the information they need to make effective
decisions. Particular sub-themes are integration across applications, business intelligence/reporting,
and data quality. The proposed ICT strategic initiative dealing with management information, business
intelligence and KPI reporting comes under this theme.
Supporting collaborative activity
Collaboration is fundamental to everything the university does. This group of activities seeks to enable
improved ways of working together through better technology support. The sub-themes for this activity
here are the deployment of the new collaboration offering (see separate strategic initiative on p. 20)
and its relationship with other information management services.

17
Strategic Initiative: Web technologies/Web strategy
Through a broad consultative process combined with industry research, a university-wide web strategy
was developed in 2005 and published in early 2006. The web strategy states that the university's web
presence must “Attract, support and retain staff, students and partners most likely to help Monash in
the attainment of its strategic goals, in the most cost-effective manner.”
The strategy represents a major shift in the university’s web presence, separating public (external-
facing) and intranet (internal-facing) content and focuses on user needs and activities rather than on
institutional information silos. This implementation project will facilitate that effort, working with content
publishers to categorise and place information for best effect for various target audiences. The new
web presence is expected to provide significant improvements in engaging with external and internal
communities, providing real staff savings through increased productivity and increased revenue
This is a two-year project. During the first phase, the Monash public web presence will be redeveloped
and internally focused content will be moved to a separate university intranet. During the second
phase the intranet will be further refined to target specific roles, functions and workgroups. Existing IT
infrastructure such as the Web Content Management System, user authentication systems and the
my.monash portal will be used to develop and deliver the new Monash web presence. All intranet
content will be accessed via the my.monash portal allowing Monash users to seamlessly navigate
across all relevant content from a single login.
Benefits
 Streamlined public web site will:
o better position Monash to attract the
leading undergraduate and
postgraduate students, and leading
research, teaching and general staff
o better position Monash to engage with
partners and benefactors
 Redeveloped public web site will
showcase key areas such as research
achievements and advancement /
marketing campaigns
 Separation of public and intranet content
will:
o make relevant information easier to
locate
o improve security for intranet content
 Improved content maintenance and
delivery processes will minimise
unnecessary duplication of content and
resources by allowing portions of content
to be re-used in more than one place.
Proposed leadership
 Vice-President Advancement
 Web Steering Committee
 Information Management Steering
Committee
 Director Applications Services, ITS
 Divisional Director, Student and
Community Services.
 2007: Ongoing operational funding of
$550K for the Content Management
System
 2008: Phase 1 rollout of Web Strategy
$1.05M from IT Capital Development
budget, plus $550K for ongoing
operational funding of Content
Management System
 2009: Stage 2 rollout of Web Strategy
$908K from IT Capital Development
Management System
 2010: Ongoing operations expenditure on
Web Strategy $202K from ITS Operational
Management System.
 Content Management System
implemented in most faculties and
divisions with completion of the rollout on
target for December 2006
 Web Strategy developed and endorsed by
Information Management Steering
Committee
 Successfully piloted Content Management
System to my.monash portal integration.

18
Strategic Initiative: Web technologies/Portal platform
The Portal Platform strategic initiative is centred on ensuring that the tools and technologies employed
to deliver the University’s my.monash enterprise portal enable sustainable growth in the use of the
portal, particularly with respect to the portal’s capacity to underpin the Monash Web Strategy.
Activities anticipated within the 2006 – 2010 timeframe include:
 the establishment of guidelines and the accompanying resourcing to facilitate a meaningful
watching brief on alternate enterprise portal products;
 conducting a proof of suitability exercise with the Oracle portal engine; and,
 subsequent to successful evaluation, trial, review, implement and migrate to the Oracle portal
engine framework.
Benefits
 It is anticipated that standardisation on
international portal standards (e.g.,
JSR168) will enable an ease and agility of
integration with the portal products of other
enterprise applications (such as mySAP)
and confer flexibility in portlet development
 Provides an underpinning infrastructure
item to facilitate the Monash Web Strategy.
Proposed leadership
 my.monash Steering Committee
 2008: capital funding requested to conduct
a proof of suitability exercise with the
preferred portal engine $530K
 2009 - 2010: pending successful proof of
suitability and development of
implementation plan; commence migration
to preferred portal engine (estimated cost
$2M over two years - planned to be sought
from capital sources).
 Completed a preliminary review of “off the
shelf” portal products for which Monash
currently has a licence
 Oracle portal engine shortlisted for further
review.

19
Strategic Initiative: Management information/Business intelligence & KPI
The availability of timely, accurate and meaningful data that can be manipulated and presented in a
customized manner has been widely discussed for a number of years. Of paramount importance is the
ability to report across multiple applications, so that a single view at different levels of the organization
can incorporate HR, Financial, Student, Research and other information sources, including external
sources.
A number of recent initiatives (TARDIS, ROPES, University KPI Reporting and Course and Unit
Profiling) have broken ground in this area. Data has been sourced from SAP, Callista,
ResearchMaster, DEST/GCCA submissions and national collections, and has been presented as a
single dataset for the purposes of reporting status and performance against both internal and external
targets. This has subsequently led to an ongoing exercise to resolve the integrity issues surrounding
multiple sources of data and has identified many areas where business processes can be improved.
Monash is piloting Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) software for its application
integration needs. BPEL can, amongst other things, populate a data repository and provide enterprise
wide definitions of data in a data dictionary that can be used in University-wide and local reporting (i.e.
faculty, division, department, etc). The data repository holds copies of transactional/non-transactional
data that have been transformed in such a way that querying, reporting and other analyses become
simple. The process of transforming operational and transactional data results in a consistent view of
information by providing a single source of Monash and other data.
Business Intelligence (BI) is a collection of applications and technologies for gathering, storing,
analysing and reporting data to help organisations make better decisions. Implementing the
recommendations of the Business Intelligence Strategy will be an important step towards achieving
seamless access to corporate information drawn from the University’s multiple sources. The proposed
Business Intelligence Competence Centre (BICC) together with strong governance will address data
quality and integrity issues university-wide.
Benefits
 Brings data from disparate sources into a
‘single version of the truth’
 Provides easier access to corporate data
 Provides 360° view of customer (student )
information (enrolment, research, financial,
etc)
 Capability to improve business process
through measuring and monitoring
performance across a range of business
activities
 Supports simple queries and reports,
OLAP and Data Mining concepts.
Proposed leadership
 Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor
 Pro Vice Chancellor Planning
 Pro Vice Chancellor Quality
 Deputy Vice Chancellor Research
 Vice President Finance and CFO
 Executive Director, ITS.
 2007: $1.1M from Capital and $185K from
Operating funds to establish the Business
Intelligence Competence Centre (BICC),
the standards and tools; and to develop
the first of the Information Release
Projects – the Research Business
Intelligence Office (includes provision for
first-year support for portfolio activities)
 2008: $655K from Capital and $178K from
Operating/Production to support the BICC
and expand the platform to accommodate
subsequent integration activity
 2009: $620K for continued support of
BICC and significant hardware
upgrade/replacement; $223K from
Operating/Production funds
 2010: Technology and environment
support for the BICC and further
integration activity absorbed into ITS
operational/production budgets.
Status to date (September 2006)
 Business Intelligence Strategy complete.

20
Strategic Initiative: Workgroup Collaboration Support
Collaboration has been identified as a critical need by all sectors of the university: education, research
and administration users. The current collaboration environment, selected in 1996, consists essentially
of email and calendar. Since this environment was selected the available marketplace offerings have
moved beyond just email and calendar towards what are called variously workgroup or enterprise
collaboration suites. These integrated offerings provide shared document spaces, mobility support,
instant messaging, presence awareness and web conferencing (in addition to email and calendar).
During 2005, a review of work group and collaboration services was again undertaken at Monash. An
extensive consultation process was conducted with the broader Monash community and the
requirements for these services were determined. The ensuing tender and evaluation process resulted
in the selection of the Lotus/SameTime collaboration suite from IBM. This collaboration solution now
needs to be rolled out to the university. This process will involve the progressive rollout of the backend
infrastructure, analysis of current collaboration practices, configuration of the new environment to
support improved ways of working, and an active change management process to derive the best
benefits for the university
Benefits
 Staff and students will be able to
collaborate more effectively, across
multiple sites and time-zones
 There will be an opportunity to use these
facilities to design and deploy standard
data flows and work practices, improving
quality and efficiency of services
 The need for staff to travel will diminish
 Monash staff who travel or work from
multiple locations will have the benefit of
much more advanced methods to
collaborate anywhere, anytime, and on a
range of devices
 Advanced collaboration services will make
it much easier for researchers to
participate in a wider range of research
activities and relationships, regardless of
location, or university affiliation
 All students will benefit from improved
functionality of services over what is
currently available, making it easier to
work in groups and to provide additional
ways for academic staff to engage with
students.
Proposed leadership
 Director, e-Research Centre
 Chair, Education Technology Committee.
 2006: Investigation, selection and licensing
of software $560K from IT Capital
Development budget
 2007: Stage 1 rollout $1.37M from Major
Capital Works budget
 2008: Stage 2 rollout $1.16M from Major
 2009: Ongoing operations expenditure
$340K from ITS Operational budget
 2010: Ongoing operations expenditure
$340K from ITS Operational budget.
 Software requirements identified
 Tenders evaluated
 Vendor selected for the new workgroup
collaboration environment.

21
ICT CORE INFRASTRUCTURE
Overview
Infrastructure is the underlying foundation for the IT applications and services which support critical
university processes. Upgrading and maintaining infrastructure usually involves a large investment,
requires significant resources and typically takes time to implement. Multiple complex dependencies
require careful planning when changes are introduced in order to minimise disruption. With the
reliance Monash has on its IT infrastructure, it is important to maintain, refresh and expand the
infrastructure to ensure it continues to support the university’s goals.
Infrastructure planning needs to be carefully designed and executed so as to retain and improve as
appropriate the following attributes
 security – to ensure data and services are not compromised
 scalability – to allow for growth and expansion
 resilience – to ensure services can tolerate a degree of failure
 recoverability – to ensure services are made available as soon as possible after failure
 accessibility – to ensure effective use of services by those authorised to use them
 manageability – to ensure services can be managed cost effectively
 fitness for purpose – to ensure value by providing effective services for the minimum overall cost
(not over or under engineered)
 standards compliance – to ensure services can be accessed in a well understood manner and
inter-operate with other services.
Because of the long lead times for acquiring and commissioning ICT infrastructure, this planning
needs to be done in a long-term context. A key requirement is to anticipate the demands that new
business applications will make on infrastructure. This requires:
 a close engagement with the business so as to be aware of possible new developments
 an awareness of technology developments in the infrastructure space that might be appropriate
for deployment at Monash
 an ability to blend requirements and opportunities in a way that matches the university’s resource
constraints and planning/funding cycles.

22
Strategic Initiative: Data Centres
The reliability of the data centre environment and infrastructure is central to providing continuous IT
services to the Monash Community. The data centre environmental services and facilities are
increasingly becoming unreliable and detrimental to the equipment, and in dire need of refurbishment
or replacement. The current ITS Data Centre located in Building 28 is estimated to be approximately
30 years old. An external audit by Norman, Disney, Young Consulting Engineers recommended ITS
commence planning a new Data Centre due to the ageing environment. Our second site at Mantrack
is of a similar age and state.
As IT technology has evolved from large monolithic computers to today’s densely populated blade
servers, data centre technology has adapted to the suit the different power and air conditioning
requirements. The proposed data centres would be designed to international standards which cater for
these extra demands and maximize data centre availability.
Monash University has always had a strategy of spreading services across two geographically
separated data centres for business continuity purposes. There is now an opportunity to combine this
with sharing resources with other universities or research institutes. As both the existing facilities are in
need of replacement, the strategy is to either:
 Build two new data centres of 500m2
each - $18.4M
 Build one new data centre or 500m2
and refurbish the existing Building 28 facility - $13.3M
 Build one large data centre of 1000m2
and share facilities with another University - $14.8M
 Refurbish an existing building to build one large data centre of 1000m2
and share facilities with
another University - $10M.
Benefits
 To decrease the risk of physical
infrastructure failures preventing the ITS
Division from supplying the IT services that
Monash depends upon in order to achieve
its strategic goals.
Proposed leadership
 Divisional Director, Facilities and Services
 Director Infrastructure Services, ITS
 Manager Production Facilities, ITS.
Until an option is decided it is difficult to put
estimated funding. The figures below should
be used as a guide only:
 2006: Plan and design phase $2M
 2007: Commence first data centre $7.2M –
$12M
The timing and costing of the second data
centre depends on which option is selected:
 Refurbish B28 $4.1M in 2008 & 2009
 Build $9.2M possibly running in to 2009
and 2010.
 ITS requirements document complete
 Melbourne Uni collaboration feasibility
complete
 Agreement from VCG to proceed with
shared second data centre
 Project team formed with Facilities and
Services.

23
Strategic Initiative: Cabled Data Network
Monash University has a large and complex network consisting of more than 1,350 network devices
servicing 20,000+ network data points in 150 buildings on 20 sites. The University relies heavily on
this network infrastructure for the delivery of academic and administrative services. The University’s
enterprise network consists of a scalable, secure, resilient high bandwidth Ethernet core backbone
and resilient Ethernet connectivity at very high speeds (gigabits per second). This will achieve high
availability network services for our end-users, by progressively eliminating single points of failure. In
turn this supports our Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity and 24x7 service delivery objectives.
The network includes enhanced security performance to conform with Monash policy. Quality of
Service (QoS) support is being implemented to prioritise traffic for delay-sensitive applications such
as video and Voice Over IP (VoIP). The strategy for network enhancement supports e-research
initiatives with enabling technology for the development of computational storage, and collaboration
grids and advanced communication services. The strategy will involve progressively moving to inter-
campus and Internet gigabit network capacity links replacing microwave with glass optical fibre
technologies as part of the rollout of the Victorian Education and Research Network (VERN). This
will enable for the first time the provision of an equal service to all Australian campuses. The VERN
fibre network will provide high speed and flexible infrastructure to support advanced education and
research services.
Benefits
 Mobility – Increase demand for a variety of
technologies that aid mobility on-campus,
inter-campus, inter-University, Australia-
wide and worldwide
 Multimedia – Increase opportunities for
video, audio, voice and related rich media /
mixed media content across the full
spectrum of applications, from courseware
through to research and administrative
functions of the University
 Collaboration – Increase use of networked
applications to aid collaboration at a
distance for education, research and
administration
 Availability – Reliable service delivery
orientation to allow Business Continuity
24x7 with planned resilience and Disaster
Recovery support. Network capacity
planning ensures risk minimisation to
services reliant on the network
 Cost effectiveness – By managing
complexity and standards compliance.
 Accountability – Emphasis on user
authentication, usage monitoring,
charging, KPIs and management reporting
systems
 Application aware Networking – Traffic
management with prioritised control for an
ever expanding diversity of central and
end-user applications
 Traffic Management – Provide Quality of
Service to end-users, dependant on the
application and need by prioritisation
 Security–Ingress Control – Protect the
network from misbehaving applications
through the implementation and
maintenance of NACP (network access
control policy).
Proposed leadership
 Manager Network Infrastructure Services,
ITS.
 2006: Next Generation Network
consolidation project totalling $1.1M from
IT Capital Development budget
 2007: Secure Network Access Control
project $144K from Major Capital Works
budget; $1.1M on VERN
 2007 - 2011: VoIP infrastructure rollout
$9M from Major Capital Works budget
 2008: $600-700K on VERN from Major
 2009 - 2010: Ongoing operations
expenditure self funded from ITS
Operational budget; $600-700K on VERN.
 Completely replaced existing edge network
electronics) throughout all campuses to
provide a baseline of high capacity
standard network equipment
 Established network monitoring and
management for fault avoidance and
capacity planning
 Provision of capability for duplicated end
user services
 Implementation of QoS (Quality of Service)
to prioritise network traffic for end-users
depending on application and need
 Pilot VoIP project to co-exist with existing
telephone and data network
 Upgraded the capability and capacity of
campus and precinct routers to better
support access control lists for security
management.

24
Strategic Initiative: Wireless Data Network
The Monash University network includes a wireless component in addition to the cabled network
described above. This includes over 3,500 wireless clients utilising the Monash Wireless service, as
well as over 400 Wireless Access Points implemented across the University sites at faculties, libraries,
cafes and meeting areas. The wireless network complements the existing cabled network
infrastructure by allowing students and staff to connect from a variety of locations to the Monash
network and the Internet, accepting connections from desktops and laptops.
Wireless services are also provided for educational and research conferences and university guests.
The mobility of the wireless technology, which is state of the art, is continually being researched and
expanded as faculties and departments request for the wireless service. A notable addition here is the
planned introduction of the eduroam service (see http://www.eduroam.edu.au/ for more information,
including a list of national and international sites). This will allow Monash staff to access wireless
networks at other eduroam sites, as well as allowing members of other eduroam institutions to access
wireless when they are visiting Monash.
Benefits
 Accessibility and Mobility – Wireless aids
mobility with base stations located at
convenient locations, such as meeting
rooms, cafes and notably libraries, thus
enabling easier and more productive use
of laptops and hand held devices in a open
environment
 Ease of use – Staff and students can
readily register via the wireless website for
wireless access and attend wireless
workshops for assistance
 Coverage and Capacity – Increasing the
Wireless access coverage expansion by
focused installations coupled with on-
demand requests; increased network
access capacity in locations such as
libraries with both wired and wireless
access
 Accountability – Emphasis on user
authentication, usage monitoring and
charging
 Authentication – Secure authentication for
staff and students accessing the wireless
network.
Proposed leadership
 Senior Management Committee
ITS.
 2006: Wireless (WISE) project totalling
$91K from IT Capital Development budget
 2007/2010: Ongoing operations and
enhancements with self funded
expenditure from ITS Operational budget.
 Rollout of wireless services (400+ wireless
access points) across all campuses for
staff and student mobility
 Complete deployment of wireless
coverage for all Monash libraries
 Conference wireless service – Provided to
allow attendees at educational and
research conferences held at a Monash
University campus, to access the internet
during the time they are at the conference
 Guest wireless service – Provided to allow
wireless access to Monash data network
for staff and students ie. visiting academics
from other Universities and guests working
for Faculties or University divisions
 Implemented a wireless management and
monitoring system to ensure service
availability from the Wireless service
 Facilitated with Halls of Residence
(Clayton campus) by implementing a
secure authentication system for students
accessing the wireless network
 Planning underway for delivery of eduroam
service in 2007.
.

25
Strategic Initiative: Internet Services
All of the locations on the Monash University network interface with the Internet service, connecting
the university to the outside world. The Internet service includes provision and management of
gateways (proxies, remote access etc), capacity, bandwidth, border and router management.
The University’s network speed on-campus, inter-campus and to the internet is gigabit per second.
This provides the potential for very high speed access to other Universities and the Internet. However,
while all the core network electronics support gigabit Ethernet and high traffic rates in the network
hardware, most inbound Internet traffic flows through the various proxy servers. The proxy servers
process traffic in software to regulate authentication, access control and billing.
The strategy in this area is to move the processing to the network border hardware. This will enhance
the performance of the proxy service functions and allow faster access. Depending on the solution
adopted, it will also bring potential improvements (network performance and login authentication) and
flow-on consequences (changes to our ability to do fine-grained security and billing) in other project
and system areas.
Benefits
 Performance – High speed and high
availability access to the Internet via
Aarnet
 Mobility – Utilising the internet to access
the Monash network from all Monash sites
via wired access and also via wireless
access and dial-in access using Virtual
Private Network (VPN) facilities
 Security – Internal/external secure access
to resources for research, education and
administrative functions of the University
for staff and students. It also includes
authentication and access-control for
devices connected to the edge of the
network
 Collaboration – Increase use of networked
applications to aid collaboration at a
distance over all facets of the University’s
operations – education, research and
administration
 Border management and control – To
protect the network from misbehaving
external applications
 Resilience – All modules of the Internet
service, including high-bandwidth feeds
and border routing have redundant
capability enabling a high availability
service to be provided for research,
education and administrative functions of
the University for staff and students
 Accountability – An emphasis on user
authentication, usage monitoring,
charging, KPIs and management reporting
systems.
Proposed leadership
ITS.
 2006: AARNet bill recovery system
implemented
 2008: Border Authenticating Internet
Gateway project totalling $426K from
Major Capital Works budget
 2007 – 2010: Ongoing operations
expenditure self funded from ITS
Operational budget and Monash Internet
Billing System.
 Rationalised functions to the network edge
to eliminate central bottlenecks, gateways
and complexity
 Restructured network addressing for more
security and reliability access to the
Internet
 Improved Internet access bandwidth and
resilience
 Implementation of a secure billing and
reporting system - Monash Internet Billing
(MIB)
 Increased support for research and
educational internet applications, thus
providing more fully featured software to
enable connection to the Internet with
more responsive management and
security.
.

26
Strategic Initiative: Telephone Services
Monash University has a large and complex telephone environment. ITS supports all aspects of voice
services within buildings and between campuses including overseas. Responsibility includes the
University's telephone services, the multi-campus PABX, mobile services, voicemail, voice processing
systems and the telephone billing systems for the University.
The PABXs at the heart of the telephone network at Monash are in excess of twenty years old and
becoming increasingly unreliable. New components have not been available for several years with the
vendor relying on refurbished parts. The vendor has now indicated that support will be withdrawn at
the end of 2008. A project to replace the PABXs over a four year period with VoIP technologies has
been recommended to the University. The VoIP technologies will facilitate the introduction of new
integrated collaboration applications supporting research, teaching and administration. It will also be
possible to progressively provide staff with state of the art voice and video solutions.
The long-term objective is to incorporate VoIP technology and position the University to take
advantage of the convergence of voice, video and data. These new converged services have the
potential to act as enablers, attractors and productivity enhancers. This is a strategic opportunity to
redefine the way the University conducts person-to-person communications. Implementing this
converged communications environment will provide innovative solutions to act as an attractor of staff,
students and researchers towards choosing Monash as their institute of choice.
Benefits
 Mobility – Increase demand for a variety of
voice technologies that aid mobility on-
campus, inter-campus, inter-University,
Australia-wide and worldwide
 Collaboration – Increase use of voice
technology to aid collaboration over all
facets of the University’s operations –
education, research and administration
 Presence – Improvements in success of
reaching the desired person through
functionality that supports presence
awareness
 Targeted communications – Ability of the
receiver to control how and when to
receive communications
 Work-flow – Improvements through the
integration of voice and video capabilities
to enterprise applications
 Cost effectiveness – Containment of costs
by moving to one technology network
platform that converges voice and data
infrastructure into a single unified service.
This has operational cost savings and
simplified operations in maintaining a
single infrastructure
 Replacement/Voice and Video Processing
Services – call centre solutions, voice mail
services, video conferencing and related
computer telephony integration
applications become more available
 Improve integration of various computer
telephony integration systems such as
voicemail and contact centres with an
associated reduction in operational costs.
Proposed leadership
ITS.
 2006: Initial VoIP investment and Next
Generation Network project totalling $160K
from IT Capital Development budget
 2007: VoIP infrastructure project from
Major Capital Works budget – $1.75M
 2008: VoIP infrastructure project – $2.04M
 2009: VoIP infrastructure project – $1.1M
 2010: VoIP infrastructure project – $553K
 Ongoing operations expenditure for all
years self funded from ITS Operational
budget.
 Provision of call centre services
 Piloting the VoIP Project
 Developed and implemented a Disaster
Recovery process for Voicemail
 Planing for convergence
 Upgrade of majority of University cabling to
latest standards
 Migration of intercampus voice traffic to
use internet protocols
 Upgrade of hardware racks including
temperature monitoring and resilience.

27
Strategic Initiative: Host Server Platforms
The host server platforms provide the underpinning infrastructure for all University applications and
services. Traditional infrastructure techniques result in a high number of servers, low utilisation per
server, higher support costs and large quantity of data-centre space. There are now in excess of 450
physical servers on the floor in the data centres with the number steadily increasing. This increase has
resulted in significant staff costs to manage the servers, data centre costs to house them and vendor
maintenance costs to support them.
The opportunity exists now to use new infrastructure technologies to provision server capacity in a
flexible, on demand manner, allowing capacity to be used efficiently by increasing or decreasing
capacity as needed by the application, in a cost effective way. With the emergence of stable server
virtualization technology, it is now possible to significantly reduce the number of physical servers and
provision server capacity quickly and efficiently and thus reduce operational costs.
ITS is therefore undertaking a concerted effort to consolidate and standardise the infrastructure
environment built upon Open Standards to provide a secure, uniform platform that simplifies
configuration, deployment, and management of our server resources and reduces the Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO). The ability to provide this environment will be greatly improved through the use of
server consolidation and virtualisation by the use of server blade technology, high density
multiprocessor clusters and virtualisation software. During 2006 the migration of services from the
existing hardware platforms to this virtualised space began. Further migrations will occur as hardware
currently in use comes to end of life over 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Benefits
 Overall decrease of required data centre
space through reduction in physical
hardware size
 Lower power and environmental resource
usage through fewer physical servers
 Lower TCO per server as utilisation of
hardware is typically increased from below
20% to above 80% therefore requiring less
physical devices to deliver the same
performance
 Improvement in scalability and enhanced
ability to deploy new services efficiently
and in the shortest possible timeframe
 Improved business continuity through
hardware sharing and the ability to
relocate virtual servers to other sites in real
time, minimising outages
 Simplified Disaster Recovery by using
common hardware across ICT services
 Improve efficiencies with staff skill sets
being focused on a smaller number of
variations in hardware and software to
support.
Proposed leadership
 Director Corporate Services ITS.
 2006: replacement of end of life hardware
for student environment and staff
environment from ITS Operational budget
$100K
 2007: Targeted funds to support additional
service migration to an enhanced
Virtualisation Centre. Using VMWare
deployed on AMD multi-way platforms
$100K
 2007: Exploration of the use of system
monitoring tools (including Open Source)
to further enhance and develop the Virtual
environments $100K
 2007: replacement of end of life hardware
for staff and student environment from ITS
Operational budget $100K
 2008 – 2009: Enterprise wide
consolidation and virtualisation of hosts
within Shared Systems $2M
 2008 – 2010: 1
st
phase of refreshment of
blade environment (amount to be
determined).
 Successful virtualisation pilot using
VMWare using 4 way AMD servers
 Initial deployment of container technology
in Solaris V10 underway
 Base blade infrastructure purchased
 Blade implementation project team
assembled from relevant IS sections.

28
Strategic Initiative: Data Storage Management
The demand for data storage at Monash is being driven at an exponential rate. Researchers are
leading this trend, encouraged by the adoption of leading-edge electronic research instruments such
as the synchrotron and scanning electron microscopes. In the area of corporate data requirements,
the storage area network (SAN) has grown from 8 terabytes in 2004 to 65 terabytes today. Some of
this was latent demand but much is the growth in the amount of data collected and stored in digital
format today.
Storing and managing such large amounts of data is not a trivial problem from either a cost or a
staffing perspective. ITS must look for more cost effective and innovative ways for managing such
large volumes of data. The technologies used must also be highly reliable, as the data must be
available for users, secure, and easily managed to minimise staff costs.
The challenge is to provision storage capacity on an as required basis, at the lowest cost possible,
and in as efficient a manner as possible, while still meeting the resilience, performance and recovery
needs of the application. A Storage Area Network was installed in 2004 in order to better manage
university data, to increase storage efficiency, to improve resilience and reduce costs. By eliminating
the need to connect servers to specific storage devices through the use of virtualisation technology,
storage efficiency will be increased and the management effort required to provision storage reduced,
both of which will drive down the ongoing cost of storage.
Activities anticipated within the 2006 – 2010 timeframe include:
 introduce a third (lower cost) storage tier to cater to different application storage needs. Low-end
Fibre Channel, SCSI or ATA-based disk arrays will be introduced for data archival systems as
secondary near-line storage
 introduce new higher capacity tape and disk technologies
 investigate more cost effective SAN technologies
 use of IP-based iSCSI to lower costs
 use of an ‘Edge SAN’ consisting of lower cost components
 storage resource management reporting to identify inefficiencies
 storage virtualisation for dynamical allocation and increased utilisation
 hierarchical storage management (near line storage on tape).
Benefits
 Reliable data protection via enterprise
class backup and restore facilities
 Tiered data storage solutions to meet the
differing university demands
 Reduced administration cost per Gigabyte
 Reduce Total Cost of Ownership per
Gigabyte
 Improved business continuity
 Improved efficiency for disk storage
utilization
 Supported environment
 Remove vendor lock in, to create greater
competition for future purchases.
Proposed leadership
 Manager Production Facilities, ITS
 Manager Shared Systems, ITS
ITS.
New initiatives;
 2006: Increase capacity, pilot iSCSI and
create disaster recovery setups $650K
 2007: Increase capacity, software licenses
$633K implement storage virtualisation
$300K
 2008: Increase capacity, software licenses
$181K Further rollout of storage
virtualisation $150K
 2009: Increase capacity, software licenses,
start technology refresh $680K, storage
virtualisation SW software license $75K
 2010: Increase capacity, software licenses,
start technology refresh $680K.
 Corporate SAN is completed
 Business continuity improvements via
cross site replication
 Backup facility is completed
 iSCSI pilot is commencing
 Large Research Data Sets (LaRDS)
project identifying needs of e-researchers
and providing interim capacity.

29
Strategic Initiative: Workstation Infrastructure
All services and applications provided to the user by ICT systems depend upon the desktop
environment to provide the initial access. This places considerable reliance on providing a reliable and
consistent workstation infrastructure to facilitate this service. During 2005 – 2006 a large amount of
work has been undertaken to enhance the infrastructure supporting workstations with several major
system upgrades occurring. The university now has an enhanced deployment and management
mechanism, including workstation inventory, remote access services and workstation data backup,
that will reduce the support costs associated with this type of infrastructure.
Workstation services (file, print, authentication, mobility, application distribution) are currently provided
by Novell software running on its proprietary Netware operating system. Novell’s preferred deployment
environment has moved from Netware to the Linux operating system. As a result, ITS plans to
progressively replace Netware with Linux in order to reduce the number of operating systems it
supports.
Over the next two years, ITS will also conduct a review to ascertain if the services provided by the
Novell environment running on Linux will continue to be appropriate in the coming years, particularly in
light of new overlapping services becoming available through the Workgroup Collaboration project.
A mature process for the definition and development of a Standard Operating Environment (SOE) for
hardware and software has been in place for a number of years. This will continue to be undertaken
as a collaborative process with representatives from around the University. The growth in the use of
thin client technology will continue as part of the SOE environment. This can provide a secure and
flexible way to deliver application and system access to Victorian based locations, as well as providing
services to Monash locations outside of Australia.
Benefits
 Lower costs associated with desktop
support through the use of a Standard
Operating Environment allowing quicker
support through telephone, remote or
onsite access
 Ability to deploy University services and
applications in a consistent and timely
fashion
 Increased staff productivity due to
availability of consistent and reliable
systems resulting in less “downtime” of
desktops
 Better management of data, software and
hardware assets at the desktop through
the adoption of tools such as workstation
software image deployment, hardware
inventory and workstation backup utilities
 All staff have the ability to access
applications and data through a number of
mechanisms from different locations
around the University
 All students obtain high quality, consistent
services regardless of campus or location.
Proposed leadership
 Director Infrastructure Services, ITS.
 2005-2006: initial update of server
infrastructure $32K
 2006: implementation of remote access
services $150K
 2007: review and renew of thin client
usage and technologies $45K
 2007-2008: rollout of Standard Operating
Environment university-wide $1M
 2008: ongoing operational support.
 Update of server infrastructure
 Updated staff and student SOEs
 Implementation of remote access services
via NetStorage and Workstation Backup
system.

30
Strategic Initiative: Security
Maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the University’s teaching, research and
administration information is extremely important to Monash’s survival. As a large proportion of
Monash’s IT fleet is directly connected to the Internet, the University is potentially susceptible to
threats that can directly impact the security of its information. These threats are constantly changing.
Monash needs to be continually vigilant in defending itself against these security issues so as to
protect its reputation and its intellectual property.
A combination of people, processes, and technology is needed to protect against IT security risks.
People (staff, students, and IT staff) must be adequately educated to ensure they understand how
they can help protect the University from attack. Our IT security policy and processes are based on
best practice ISO 17799. From the technology perspective, key IT security components are
integrating together to provide a platform where users can do what they require, but do so securely.
This is especially important when looked at from a University perspective.
This strategy encompasses the following components:
 Education – maintain an active education programme with all users of IT at the University.
 Processes – ensure that Monash’s security policy and procedures meet best practice.
 Technology – Review the University’s security architecture in terms of:
o Firewalls, which allow appropriate traffic and block inappropriate traffic
o Intrusion Prevention systems, which detect attacks and stop them in real time
o Network Admission Control, which ensures networked devices are ‘safe’ before they are
allowed access to the University’s network resources.
The University’s anti-virus product is also due for renewal. A review of the current product was
recently undertaken. The outcome from that review was that Monash should issue an RFP to
evaluate the costs and benefits of currently available anti-virus offerings.
Benefits
 Protects the University against user
initiated security problems through an
effective user education programme
 Enhances the Network Access Control
Policy, provides support for more
protocols, e.g. H.323 which will support
collaboration via voice/video conferencing
 Allows finer grain access control and
configuration to services, reducing the risk
of compromise
 Stops attacks in real time, lowering
required staff effort. Will also stop
undesirable protocols in real time, e.g.
Kazaa, BitTorrent
 Protects PCs by ensuring they have the
latest patches and up to date anti-virus
installed on them – this is especially
important with portable computers that
may plug into different networks.
Proposed leadership
 IT Security Steering Committee.
 ITS Directorate
 Designated University IT Security Officers
 Anti-Virus Review Committee.
 2006: Anti-Virus Request For Proposal
$250K from ITS Operational Budget,
Education programme – researchers and
students $25K from ITS Operational
budget
 2007: Firewalls $300K Major Capital
Works budget, Education programme –
staff $10K from ITS operational budget
 2008: Firewalls $750K Major Capital
Works budget, Intrusion Prevention
System $1M Major Capital Works budget –
IT staff $10K From ITS Operational budget
 2009: Network Admission Control $700K
Major Capital Works budget.
 IT Security for Researchers education
campaign about to be launched
 Firewall project concept submitted for
2007/2008 capital funding
 Anti-Virus review completed, draft RFP
written.

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