The main task of the Services for Departments (ITS S4D) section is to provide IT services to the ETH departments. In addition to D-BIOL, D-GESS and D-MTEC, they are now also collaborating with D-MAVT (Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering). On 1 April, the team from ITS Services for D-MAVT took over responsibility for the IT in the department.

ITS S4D, together with the Head of the D-MAVT department and local IT support, carried out a situation and needs analysis in the summer of 2016. This resulted in various solutions for the ongoing development of the IT services for the department. Thanks to the open and constructive dialogue of all involved, an agreement was quickly reached and a modular concept was proposed. A special thanks goes out to Sascha Jovanovic, Ulrike Schlachter-Habermann and Prof. David Norris!

D-MAVT will finance a basic offer centrally for all professors, in order to ensure support of the basic IT infrastructure. Furthermore, professors will also be able to apply for approve standard services, such as support for workstations and laptops with Windows, MacOS and Linux operating systems, and special services such as support for research laboratory systems, if required. Talks held with the professors have confirmed the interest in and also acceptance of such a new service offering.

Two former D-MAVT employees have already been taken over by the ITS department, and the ITS S4D-MAVT group will be strengthened further from July with two additional employees. We are pleased to have been able to form a partnership with this department, which is heavily dependent on information technology. The provision of IT services for such a demanding and complex environment represents an important, but also exciting, challenge, which we are really looking forward to.

Luca Previtali, Head of Services for Departments (ITS S4D)

The ETH Zurich has an extensive portfolio of software. The campus licences are obtained by IT Procurement (ITS PPF) and made available to users via a wide variety of services (e.g. IT shop). However, many of these products are only licenced for use within the areas of research and education, which means they often cannot be used in projects with participants from industry. The IT Services (ITS) department offers services in relation to Software Asset Management (SAM), and can develop solutions which enable contract-compliant usage while taking economic aspects into consideration.

IT Procurement & Portfolio (ITS PPF) takes care of licensing and SAM at the ETH Zurich. It provides advice to the institutes in relation to licensing issues, ensures the required level of awareness for compliance aspects during information events and lectures, and develops practical solutions for ETH members. A recent example here is the central pool of commercial licences for a technical / scientific product. Although the ETH has an extensive licence for this product, it only applies for academic use. Usage of these licences for projects with industry participation is not permitted, which is why a solution was developed in the form of a network licence pool. These commercially-usable licences are provided in a modular form to the interested institutes for the duration of the project. The institute - which would have needed to obtain a licence anyway due to the project - can now obtain and use the precise number of licences for the desired project period. Such licences are not particularly cheap. Thanks to the centrally-managed licence pool, institutes only need to pay a small percentage of the costs incurred for the licences. What’s more, IT Procurement of the ITS department can negotiate special conditions for the products. All in all, this solution helps to ensure the required level of compliance while taking aspects of economy and efficiency into consideration.

Ralph Curschmann, IT Asset Manager, IT Procurement & Portfolio (ITS PPF)

The new central data storage system has got off to a flying start with a striking profile. The storage system is managed centrally and can be accessed by groups and institutes of the ETH via the network. In order to be able to offer future-proof storage solutions, the ITS area is relying on Software Defined Storage (SDS). The Spectrum Scale storage from IBM is not the only new aspect, as soon it will be possible to order storage resources via the IT shop of ETH Zurich, which has been completely overhauled.

The amount of data that we are all producing is increasing rapidly and users want to store this reliably, access it at any time, and be able to increase storage space as and when required. With the new, central storage system, the ITS department is offering a modern storage solution and services for the storage of data, an activity with a great deal of responsibility. Based on a requirements analysis created together with the users, the ITS department has produced a storage system that is geared towards the needs of the users. Integration into the IT Service Management Platform (ITSM) is to be completed in 2017 after the summer. Following this, ETH users will be able to provide and manage storage space in the central storage system automatically and around the clock via the ITSM portal. The ITS department has thus established the basis for ensuring a high level of agility in the allocation of storage resources while supporting use cases from Research, Teaching and Administration. The Spectrum Scale storage solution ensures the highest levels of agility, flexibility, scalability and functional extendibility for our most valuable asset – our data.

Dr. Tilo Steiger, Group Manager Storage Services (ITS SD)