The SI2020 Project Arouses Curiosity
© 2015 EPFL
FORUM SI > There was a full house on February 3 at EPFL’s Convention Center for the Forum SI. Organized by VPSI, the meeting attracted more than 230 employees working in the university’s information systems. The record crowd makes sense considering the relevance of the themes and especially the mounting curiosity about the famous reorganization project, SI2020.
Curiosity won out. Many among the 230 employees who roamed about the ground floor garden of the SwissTechConvention Center on Tuesday, February 3, cited the same motivation for attending: curiosity about the SI2020 Project. Shortly before the festivities began, the room was abuzz with impatience. “Damn, we have to wait until the last presentation to find out more,” whispered one attendee to her neighbor. “I just wonder how all this will affect us,” commented another. Was it a deliberate attempt to incite curiosity, or perhaps a communication breakdown? One thing was certain: everyone eagerly awaited the presentation on the SI2020 Project by Karl Aberer, Vice President for Information Systems.
The SI2020 Project
Although you probably have never heard of it, it’s causing a minor IT revolution at EPFL. During his presentation, Karl Aberer outlined his project. In recent months, the entire organizational structure of the Vice Presidency for Information Systems (VPSI) has been redesigned and modified to provide a working model that can manage – effectively and over the long term – extremely rapid technological developments. Basically, the idea is to reduce administrative inertia by radically changing the structure of a work team and by always placing the user at the center of each consideration. Internet users will likely not notice the transition, but they will certainly appreciate the increased efficiency of 90 IT services offered by EPFL. In addition, the power unleashed by the improved management of various IT services will be used to strengthen the development of VPSI research projects.
If, for the moment, the cells of central IT services and other departments are not yet affected, ultimately they are also encouraged to adopt this new modus operandi. According to Karl Aberer, who presides over the governance of IT at EPFL , the reorganization is necessary in order to continue to support the growing computing needs of users.
More news about the SI2020 Project, HERE.
Large IT projects
The themes developed by others presenting at the Forum SI addressed the big challenges facing IT at EPFL and the extent of their implications. The most thrilling concerned the management of Big Data, because over a period of a few years, EPFL’s storage needs have exploded. Sofiane Sarni, Head of the Storage Project at VPSI, gave the example of the School of Life Sciences (SV). In 2012, the school’s laboratories stored more than 250 TB of data (1 terabyte = 1,000 gigabytes), but the forecasts for 2017 show a need approaching 5,000 TB. The whole problem consists of proposing to laboratories, staff and students a solution that is at once efficient, secure and inexpensive. This is a major headache, considering that a great deal of laboratory data is currently stored on simple external hard drives.
Pierre Mellier of VPSI then presented the challenges of the mobile Internet and the complexity of setting up a responsive web design performance, in which a website’s shape adapts to the device visiting it (laptop, tablet, smartphone) to improve visual comfort while reading. After this, Patrick Jermann, Executive Director of CEDE (Centre for Education in the Digital Era), returned to the topic of the excellent performance of EPFL MOOCs since their inception in spring 2013. In just two years, more than 800,000 people have enrolled in one of the 25 MOOCs offered by the school.
The next edition of the IT Forum will take place in fall 2015.