Welcome to the Update series for the IT Change Program.

We will keep you updated on the IT Change Program progress and upcoming key events. An overview of the program goals and milestones can be found on the One UNSW website.

The new Shared Desktop Service for staff has been introduced within Central IT and Student Equity and Disability. The first week of March marked a significant milestone with the Desktop Service going live in the Faculty of Medicine teaching labs (with more than 450 students logging in during the first two days of session). This will be closely followed by the deployment of the desktop service in the Faculty of Law.

This also marked the first use of a new password system called zPass. For more information on zPass visit the zpass website.

In addition, some staff in the Faculties of Arts and Social Sciences, Engineering, Australian School of Business and all of Central IT are now using the new Staff Email Service.

The roll out of services will continue throughout 2009. Transition Plans will be developed on an area-by area basis for each Division / Faculty / School / Unit in consultation with local staff.

For further information on the new Shared Services, visit the Staff Email and Shared Desktop Service websites.

The University is currently implementing a new email service for all undergraduate students, postgraduate coursework students and alumni called zMail. This service is to replace UniMail and was initially rolled out to the Maths Summer School students late in November 2008 and will become available to the broader student community starting mid-April 2009. The rollout for Alumni is scheduled for May 2009.

Students and alumni who currently redirect their incoming UNSW email to some other mail service such as Gmail or Hotmail will not be impacted by the introduction of zMail. However, a zMail mailbox will be created for these users to give them the opportunity to evaluate zMail as a preferred email environment. The zMail service is managed by the University and hosted by Microsoft.

For more information on zMail visit the zMail website.

The New UNSW IT Service Centre opened in February with the student front desk and service desk staff now located in the same area (next to the post office).

During February, first and second level support for eLearning Vista and eLIMS was transitioned from Learning and Teaching to the IT Service Centre. During this first month, 91% of Service requests and 83% of service incidents were able to be resolved directly by Service Centre Staff.

IT at UNSW in partnership with our service provider, AARNet have recently completed work to upgrade the prime UNSW Internet connection from 1Gbps to 10Gbps. The second UNSW Internet connection will be upgraded to 10Gbps in March 2009, providing UNSW with dual, diverse path fully redundant 10Gbps Internet connections. This connectivity is 10,000 times faster than the average Australian broadband service.

This new connection is provided to enable UNSW researchers to have unprecedented access to bandwidth supporting research and collaboration, both domestically and internationally. Any researchers requiring Internet access beyond normal requirements, please contact the IT at UNSW Service Centre and IT at UNSW will work with you in supporting your research initiatives.

The next monthly update will be available in late April. Questions and feedback can be sent to IT Transition Director, Denise Black ext. 53408 or email ictprogram@unsw.edu.au.

For further news, updates and handy IT tips, keep an eye out for 'Click' a monthly newsletter published by the UNSW IT Customer Service Team.