Administration Zone Overview

Together with the Private Intranet Zone, the Administration Zone is generally the least understood and discussed, yet contains the greatest source of transformational potential of the site. As a general statement, it is the foundation and enabler of all the site's current and future capabilities. It is also the source and repository of limiting factors.

The Administration Zone 3 in Exhibit 11 provides the productivity enhancing tools that will allow a school to leverage its academic offerings using Internet technologies with expanded breadth and depth, without a proportionate increase in operating costs. It is the repository for labor and cost saving applications with high ROI. Accordingly, appropriate focus is mandatory; industry experience shows that sub-optimal effort here results in diminished capabilities and increased costs.

Infrastructure Already in Place

Even if a school already has or is likely soon to have technology infrastructure in place, it is prudent, nevertheless, to perform a technology discovery to review existing servers and networks; based on which a web technology team can make informed decisions in such areas as:

• Configuration of servers and applications to achieve optimal integration, efficiency and cost savings.
• Access to and querying of up-to-date databases. Often, different community members use different tools and in some cases different data to generate output.
• Data updating, backup and storage.
• Creating labor saving and productivity enhancing procedures with high ROI that pay for themselves generally within two years through cost savings, greater productivity, and that minimize the need for adding to staff.
• Tuning of systems to allow for maximum expansion of capabilities within the existing infrastructure.

These goals are most likely attained when sound and well-configured servers and infrastructure are in place and administered with a modicum of attention. Not only could transformational goals be achieved, but also leveraged cost-effectively over a growing population, without commensurate increases in operating expenses.