IT Infrastructure manages all on-premise enterprise data center and communications facilities, including all enterprise data networking, voice communications, and related supporting technologies.
Whether for research, procurement of goods and services, or any number of other mission-critical and time-sensitive transactions, the Stanford community relies on the foundation and backbone that UIT provides with its communications and IT facilities. Our primary objective is to provide a reliable infrastructure that is built with state-of-the-art technologies to meet the current and anticipate future demands of the university mission.
IT Infrastructure
IT Infrastructure is responsible for the Stanford network (SUNet), as well as Stanford’s voice application services and the related engineering and support units. We provide consistent and seamless services to thousands of users who study and work at Stanford’s main campus, over one hundred sites across the Bay Area, greater California, and scattered locations throughout the United States and foreign countries. Our services are architected to ensure reliability, scalability, and cost effectiveness.
The IT Infrastructure unit is composed of SUNet Backbone and Network Security, LAN Engineering, Communication Technologies, Automation and Service Reliability, Service Delivery, and Resource Management.
IT Facilities Infrastructure & Resilience (IT FIRe)
Responsible for providing operational management and support for the underlying foundational physical infrastructure for UIT services including the outside plant (OSP: including conduit, copper, fiber), inside plant (ISP: including TRs, pathway, copper, fiber, TSOs), and mission critical facilities housing production and development IT systems and supporting infrastructure. Facilities supported include the Forsythe Hall Data Center, the Northwest Data Center and Communication Hub (NDCCH), and nine geographically-distributed Electronic Communications Hubs (ECHs).
The IT Facilities unit is composed of four teams: Hosting Services, Technical Facilities (TFAC), Facilities Operations (FO), and IT Resilience.
Hosting Services
Responsible for capacity management, rack-level space planning, fulfillment, provisioning, and billing of data center and cloud infrastructure services (IaaS). Lead client engagement, including demand management and project management, for complex data center installations. Capital asset tracking and lifecycle management for assets in UIT-managed spaces, UIT and Business Affairs.
Technical Facilities (TFAC)
Responsible for oversight of UIT’s technical facilities, including power, cooling, racks, room-level space planning, maintenance, monitoring applications, engineering, security and access control, and capital planning and projects. Lead vendor/partner engagement with BGM, Zone Management, and third-party vendors.
Facilities Operations (FO)
Comprised of four groups that support the physical communication infrastructure of the University. Provide special services for University and Health Care events.
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Facilities Engineering (FE)
Provide design and construction project management for all University construction projects, management of the University’s carrier and carrier-neutral cellular infrastructure, as well as maintaining the University’s copper, fiber and coax structured cabling systems. Manage and maintain the UIT underground conduit and service vault infrastructure that houses all our underground copper, fiber and coax cables between buildings and communication hubs (ECHs).
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Installation & Maintenance (I&M)
Deliver advanced communication services and provide incident resolution across all mediums of the infrastructure through a 24x7 technical team. Support all University schools, departments, residents, and health care (local and remote). Provide property tracking and inventory staging of advanced communication devices.
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Computer-Aided Design (CAD)
Responsible for the creation and ongoing maintenance for documentation, AutoCAD drawings, associated databases, security of telecommunication rooms, FE projects website, and the CNSCAD website. Create and maintain all physical and database layers in AutoCAD for all UIT-owned structures and grounds; update and maintain associated databases.
IT Resilience
Responsible for UIT’s efforts related to crisis management, emergency response management, disaster recovery, business recovery, and contingency planning. Partner with ITOC on the UIT Department Operations Center (DOC) and sponsorship of UIT CERT (Community Emergency Response Team). Serve as UIT representative on Stanford’s STAT (Situation Triage & Assessment Team), EOC (Emergency Operations Center), and EMSC (Emergency Management Steering Committee). Responsible for defining the UIT Problem Process and executing Problem Management, including root cause analysis and dissemination of lessons learned throughout UIT. Lead efforts to ensure all UIT services create, maintain, and test standard service continuity plans, conduct regular tabletop service level exercises, and conduct an annual enterprise-wide disaster recovery exercise. Partner with ISO to plan and conduct quarterly incident response exercises.
Automation and Service Reliability (ASR)
The Automation and Service Reliability team is responsible for the development and support of numerous tools and integrations used across campus. These tools support various business functions. In order to successfully support many of these tools, the developers are required to intimately understand the underlying business processes and terminology behind the tools themselves e.g. network infrastructure and routing, collaboration and voice systems as well as phone number management. Our team frequently gets pulled into projects requiring custom development. This development typically involves 3rd party APIs and developing automation critical to the implementation or maintenance of an application or service, automating tasks in support of reliability, or developing tools where no software solution exists on the commercial market. Read more about what we do here.
