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Infrastructure Applications

Infrastructure Applications is one of several service areas in IT Services. The vision for the Infrastructure Applications Group is "to provide robust, reliable and scalable directory and related infrastructure services to the University".

Key Responsibilities

The key responsibilities of the Applications group are:

• Planning and co-ordination of centralised mechanisms for authentication and (where appropriate) authorisation;
• Planning and day-to-day management of University Directory Services via appropriate technology infrastructures;
• Provision of architecture and infrastructure to support managed desktop provision in both open access areas and in staff offices;
• Delivery of a print charging system across the University;
• Co-ordination of computer registration facilities to ensure the effective management of computer accounts and resources;
• Provision of directory related middleware infrastructure;
• Email and collaboration;
• Web infrastructure.

The Infrastructure Applications service consists of four teams whose remit is to ensure that sufficient focus is placed on the core service components outlined above.

Registration and Directory Services Team

The core responsibilities of the Registration and Directory Services team include:

• core authentication/authorisation and accounting services;
• LDAP provision;
• directory design, integration, development and management;
• middleware initiatives related to electronic identity management, authentication and authorisation on core systems, including single sign on and federated access;
• development and support of a registration service for core institutional systems and integration with core Management Information Systems;
• provision of a single point of truth for account and permission management provision of facilities for the devolvement of IT account management to faculty IT staff (URS) and the end user (IT Account Manager);
• provision of a single point of truth for account and permission management consultancy and support for system integration and system/user migration.

• provision of shared area services

Desktop Infrastructure Team

The Desktop Infrastructure team is responsible for the:

• development of desktop and networked system architectures to support managed student desktop services;
• development of a managed staff desktop architecture;
• provision of directory resource management services to provide software delivery and desktop management functionality;
• provision of centralised printing services; middleware initiatives related to directory enabled resource management;
• campus wide application license farm and object build support; asset management systems development and maintenance;
• centralised patch management systems provision Windows OS and related applications;
• maintenance/ development of print payment systems; monitoring and development of emerging systems management technologies.

Email and Collaboration Team

The role of this team is to manage and support the centrally based email services. These include:

• anti-spam and anti-virus email scanning;
• email routing;
• webmail access to email;
• the Staff and Student Email server;
• the Staff Calendar Service;
• mailing list services.

We aim to ensure the services respond to changes in customer requirements.

Web Infrastructure Team

The web infrastructure team are responsible for the hosting of university web sites and web based services based on the Linux architecture, including:

• provision of (shared) Linux based hosting on the LAMP stack [Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl];
• provision of Apache Tomcat based hosting;
• provision of bespoke dedicated web hosting;
• provision of shared and bespoke MySQL database services;
• Xen virtualisation;
• infrastructure support for the university content management system;
• hosting/support of the university Google Search Appliance.