Public Higher Education Bulletin

The IT Division of CSU has encountered a critical need for power that puts the University at grave risk, and is now a critical emergency. The data center at CSU is so overburdened, that no more devices can be plugged in. However, CSU owns new hardware that must be plugged into run critical systems for the University. Further, if there is a power surge, the University is at risk for losing critical systems and data, which may take days to recover. Moreover, CSU's Sungard Banner system is at end of life and must be immediately upgraded. Sungard Banner runs all essential University functions such as finance and accounting, budget, human resources, purchasing and students services. If CSU has an outage on the existing system, Sungard is no longer obligated to provide services on version 7.x. Further, CSU's external auditors have indicated that the power in the CSU data center is so overburdened that CSU will get an audit finding for insufficient power to protect the university's most vital asset. The audit finding will be because there is not enough power to adequately run the system, and because there is not a sufficient backup power source in the forms of UPS systems and generated power. CSU owns the software to upgrade to version 8.x, and CSU acquired the necessary hardware to upgrade to Banner 8.x. At the time of the acquisition, CSU believed it would be able to realign the power on the existing grid to support the new systems. However after pulling all available power, and disconnecting all unnecessary systems, CSU has discovered that it doesn't have sufficient power to run the new system. Therefore, neither the hardware nor the software upgrades can be completed because CSU lacks enough power to plug in the new hardware. Without new hardware, CSU can not do the software upgrade. The existing hardware an HP 9000 system running the Banner 7 machine is end of life, and is 16 years old. The HP 9000 can not be used to bring up the new system because of lack of system resources and power issues on the HP 9000. At the conclusion of the emergency, CSU will be able to provide the power and backup needs for the HP system and Sungard Banner upgrades.