Network Introduction
This introduction comes directly from our own portal, where we help employees understand each department's role at CU*Answers. Here, we share the same information with you that we share with our employees.
Dave Wordhouse
Vice President of Network Technologies
Our team is much like a state or city's Department of Transportation. DoTs are responsible for the physical infrastructure and safety of city or state roads, bridges, transportation arteries, toll booths, snow removal, patching potholes, etc. If the department is doing its job, citizens rarely notice or think about the DoT. But if roads fall into disrepair, bridges become unstable, or freeways aren't built where they're needed, the neglect is obvious and frustrating to anyone using the infrastructure.
Instead of physical transportation infrastructure, the Internal Network team architects, builds, maintains, and secures the infrastructure that allows CU*Answers to perform and deliver essential business services to our customers. Everything from the PC on your desk to the servers in the back falls under our umbrella. We currently support almost 300 networked devices all over the country. That's a lot of devices to keep running, patched, secure, and happy all at the same time.
We also have contributed to myriad Internet and Intranet projects including single sign-on technologies, security best practices, object-oriented and code library programming recommendations, document management, encryption techniques, and scalability of applications both horizontally and vertically.
We are working closely with Operations and Programming on implementing highly available computing platforms. This technology will eventually be leveraged for geographically distinct data centers providing CU*Answers clients a uniquely available DP solution. We are also involved with the CU*BASE application and a team member sits on the CU*BASE executive council. Currently we are investigating web-based status tracking and delivery of programming change requests with pre-emptive e-mail notification.
An exciting business opportunity we're currently exploring is providing facilities management and managed hosting to other small and medium sized firms. By leveraging our technical expertise and our advanced and SAS-70 audited data center, we are providing solutions that allow these firms to attain objectives that would otherwise be out of reach.
The pages on our site are designed to communicate our vision and purpose to you as well as provide essential information to better equip you to do your job. This includes special forms for reporting security breaches or asking for PC or application support. Security Tips discuss real-world issues you need to be aware of, and Business and Disaster Recovery documents the process of updating these critical documents. Our Secure-U classes offer solid up-to-the-minute security advice and best practices to both CU and internal staff members. As far as we know, they are the only free classes of their type available anywhere. Also included are current proposals, programs, and links to important information.
We hope you enjoy our site. If things have been running smoothly for you, be sure to let us know. We love to hear about things other than pot holes!
Now that you know about some of our capabilities, how can we help you with your current or next project?
When not designing, building, securing, or maintaining information systems to tackle CU*Answers next set of business objectives, Dave enjoys discussing and studying philosophy and world religions, especially as they relate to the unique claims of Christ.
Ways to Stay Connected
on Twitter
to RSS
NewsStand
also find us on facebook and LinkedIn