Hardware Today: College Elects Unisys Expansion Page 2

Up and Running

Unisys technicians are currently on site at WCC overseeing the install. To date, only minor issues have come up, and they have all been related to data access to the legacy applications. This is being resolved by converting the old data to the new database format. Otherwise, Scordino reports some delays due to the electrical work running behind schedule.

Overall, the college is more than happy with the support it is getting from Unisys. “With a single point of contact for any issues, we don’t have the situation of finger pointing over whether it is a hardware or software problem,” said Scordino. “We score five nines on our old Unisys boxes, and I don’t expect anything less from the ES7000.”

Next on the WCC agenda is training IS staff members on the new systems. While the IS staff is 46 members strong, Scordino believes only six employees require extensive training on the ES7000 hardware. These six people will receive two weeks of in-house education in the near future. Others will receive a shorter training program to familiarize them with the hardware and software.

“You have to schedule in-house training, as the ES7000 is a lot more complex than anything else we are used to,” Scordino noted.

Excluding the PeopleSoft applications, WCC spent $700,000 on the project. This includes the Unisys hardware, Microsoft Software, installation, some Dell blade servers, an EMC Clarion CX600 for storage, additional networking gear to establish a SAN, and training for WCC’s IS staff.