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Dear reader,
The year started with many discussions regarding the issue of reducing costs, which will continue to occupy us. Despite cost pressures, we do our best to continue to provide our users with innovations that will support them in their work. This means listening to the users and understanding their needs through dialogue. Read about how our Business Relationship Office tackles this.
eResearch is one example of an innovative digitisation solution that we are using to help ETH employees. This is a solution for managing research funding, which we developed in close collaboration with the Research staff that is based on a standard product. This is a solution that can be used for all funding instruments, and one that the Research staff is already using for initial issues in this area. Another example is the introduction of our "Kubernetes as a Service" service. This allows us to provide Kubernetes clusters efficiently to interested ETH groups, which they can then manage themselves.
Read more about this and other topics in inside|out.
Warm regards,
Dr Rui Brandao
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| With the ear trumpet for the external communication with our customers and the proper tools for testing and measuring our services, Michèle Bürchler (BRO), Peter Kessler (SMO), and Andreas Widler (QM), from left to right, are focused on their tasks |
Business Relationship Office (BRO) |
The Business Relationship Office is responsible for optimising the customer care process within IT Services, defining and establishing best practices for customer care and regularly assessing customer satisfaction to continuously improve our services. It also addresses questions such as "What do our customers need for their daily work at ETH Zurich?" and "How can we provide the best possible support?".
Within IT Services (ITS), there is the Business Relationship Office (BRO), which works closely with the Service Management Office (SMO) and Quality Management (QM), complementing these three positions with a stronger customer focus. While the SMO manages the service portfolio, the QM drives the further development and establishment of ITS governance and operational processes, ensuring their quality and compliance with specific IT standards and best practices. On the other hand, the BRO focuses on customer needs, communication and their requirements for the ITS and its services.
Why did the IT Services opt for a BRO? The ITS management has identified gaps in customer service that need to be filled. In addition, a central point of contact is now provided for customers without support, and the processes within customer care are standardised and optimised. This also involves defining missing processes, such as demand management.
As part of the demand management process, customer requests are collected, analysed, processed and fulfilled whenever possible.
A customer survey conducted in 2019 revealed that while the IT Services are technically very competent, there were also suggestions that customer orientation and handling of customer inquiries should be further improved to make collaboration more effective and pleasant.
The ITS staff will continue to be the gateway to the IT Services. However, our goal is to handle customer inquiries in a more structured and consistent manner to ensure a better customer experience.
We hope that the BRO will contribute to improve the collaboration between IT Services and our customers and look forward to successful partnership. The BRO can be reached at bro@id.ethz.ch.
Michèle Bürchler, Business Relationship Office (ITS CCR) |
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| Phone Control Center: Telephone redirection made easy |
| Meeting or holiday? Redirect your personal ETH telephone number to another number. For example, to the ETH telephone exchange (internal: 111). Other numbers such as group connections can also be redirected on order. Access to the Phone Control Center is only possible in the ETH Zurich network or via VPN. |
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| Thriving research: Werner Schnedl and Simone Papa, from left (both ITS APPS), help out. Support for research funding lays the foundations for emerging ideas to flourish and grow |
One web portal for all funding instruments |
By implementing standard software, the eResearch project at ETH has optimised and standardised research funding processes. Researchers benefit from a user-friendly environment to apply for project funding and further develop the research landscape. The close collaboration between IT Services and the Office of Research ensured that the project was successfully implemented. Since summer 2022, eResearch has been running smoothly and provides an optimal solution as a result of the strong teamwork of both teams.
Each year, a variety of applications are used at ETH to examine more than 1,000 proposals for the funding of teaching, research and academic prizes. The rising volume, the increased complexity and the existing media discontinuities demanded a coordinated, quality-assured process.
The vision was to create a web portal for all ETH funding instruments. The specification for the system was to support the entire process of submitting, assessing and approving proposals in the Office of Research’s areas. This should in turn drive forward the digitalisation and standardisation of processes.
With eResearch, we have created a future-proof platform at ETH that meets the growing demands for research funding. By digitalising and standardising processes, we can provide researchers with a streamlined and user-friendly environment to apply for research funding for their projects and thus further develop the research landscape.
Read more from the Office of Research on the challenges of the project and find out about probably the shortest project proposal in the history of research in the ITS Blog.
Werner Schnedl, ITS Applications (ITS APPS)
Dr Martine Vernooij, Grants Office, Division VP Research |
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| Email Services soon in the cloud |
| ETH Zurich emails are stored on ITS’s ETH servers in the Exchange 2016 version. Since this version is no longer supported by Microsoft, a migration is necessary. The Executive Board has therefore decided to use "Exchange Online" from Microsoft in future. If you have any questions, please contact the project manager Matteo Corti. |
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| Adrian Fischli, Thomas Stocker and Armin Wittmann, from left (all ITS INFRA), are running containerised applications at ETH Zurich |
Running containerised applications with KaaS |
The new "Kubernetes as a Service" (KaaS) enables complex, containerised applications to be operated on the basis of the IT Services’ IT infrastructure. Customers are provided with a Kubernetes cluster within their Virtual Private Zone (VPZ), which is given over for use with all administrative rights.
The customer requirements are recorded in a consultation session; in the onboarding process, the Kubernetes cluster is customised and user access is enabled. At handover, customers are briefed on how to use the service. This allows them to independently provide, scale and further manage containerised applications with their own deployment processes. All the usual Kubernetes interfaces and functions are available.
The service is available immediately and will be continuously expanded according to customer requirements. More information is available in the Service Catalogue.
Dr Armin Wittmann, Head of Infrastructure (ITS INFRA)
Adrian Fischli, Group Head ITS Server (ITS INFRA) |
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| The shortened IT apprenticeship at ETH |
| Graduation in two years: The Way-up pilot will begin at ETH in IT from August 2023 as the first profession to be offered in this form. The teaching is compact and practice-oriented and offers a good alternative to studying after secondary school. |
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| The National University of Australia, University of Oxford, University of Copenhagen, University of California, Berkeley, National University of Singapore and the University of Cape Town are visiting this year's host, IT Services of ETH Zurich |
IARU Cybersecurity Forum @ ETH Zurich |
Founded in 2006, the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) is a network of eleven leading international universities from nine countries around the world. The IARU Cybersecurity Forum is a group of people from IT management as well as security specialists who regularly exchange information on cybersecurity topics.
Due to the pandemic, the group met in virtual sessions from 2020 to 2022. This year, however, the IARU Cybersecurity Forum was held in-person again for the first time since the pandemic. From 13 to 15 June 2023, ETH Zurich hosted a diverse programme on the latest cybersecurity topics.
The lectures by Prof. Dr Adrian Perrig (ETH Institute of Information Security), Martin Leuthold (SWITCH), Dr Domenico Salvati (Chief Information Security Officer of ETH Zurich) and the IT Security Group of IT Services formed the basis for an intensive exchange and exciting discussions. The topics ranged from information security governance and security incident management to the use of SCION.
Find out more about the 2023 host on «In the spotlight: Getting to know our IARU members».
Dr Rui Brandao, Director of IT Services
Anja Harder, Chief IT Security Officer, IT Services |
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| How can I contribute to energy saving? |
| We can all do our bit to save electricity. Be it switching off standby on our monitors, shutting down PCs or disconnecting unneeded devices from the power supply. Read more about this and about saving energy with power distribution units on the ITS Blog. |
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