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The Carolina Computing Initiative reached a milestone Feb. 14, the day the last
of the first wave of CCI machines for faculty and staff was installed in the
College of Arts and Sciences.
That means every faculty and staff member in the college's 62 departments,
programs and curricula now has a new CCI machine. Academic Technology and
Networks (ATN) staffers joined college and departmental support personnel to
deploy some 1,900 computer since November 1998.
"(The deployment went as) smoothly as can be expected when doing something that
has never been done here before," said Linwood Futrelle, ATN's director of
distributed support.
Futrelle said that deployment of the computers entailed a number of steps that
included meeting with departments to determine what each faculty or staff
member was to receive, setting up and configuring new machines, and
transferring data from old machines to new ones.
Under CCI, College of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff will get new
computers every three years, with the next deployment wave beginning in the
fall. The plan is to have faculty and staff campuswide get machines every three
years, but that will depend on funding, Futrelle said.
The departmental machines stem from Carolina's CCI contract with IBM to buy
desktop and laptop computers at substantial discounts. Previously, ad-hoc
purchases led to a variety of computer types and capabilities across campus,
and not always acquired at the best prices.
Futrelle said that CCI stretches department's technology dollars by freeing up
funds for purposes other than computer purchases, such as discipline-specific
technology needs. And the standardization that has resulted from CCI also
lowers IT support costs, Futrelle said.
Another major component of CCI is that it requires Carolina's undergraduate
students -- starting with this year's freshmen -- to have a laptop computer.
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