ACES IT has six divisions: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, Program Support, Research & Development, and Infrastructure. Each division is tasked with different goals designed to help different aspects of the College of ACES, Extension(CES), and Agriculture Experiment Stations achieve their goals. Each division has a leader.
In short,
- Tier 1 is the Helpdesk and designed to answer quick requests (i.e., reset passwords or basic, routine issues)
- Tier 2 supports on-campus users, Dona Ana ASCs, and the Dona Ana CES office.
- Tier 3 supports 54 County Extension Offices and Agriculture Science centers.
- Program Support helps any program, (student) organization, or department improve or train workflows or integrate new technologies.
- Research & Development design applications, help preprocess or migrate data, and offer to maintain and preserve lab instruments.
- Infrastructure designs, implements, and maintains mission-critical servers and services – ensuring they meet security and data compliance, are backed up, and have failover redundancies.
Services Offered
Basic Software Support. This service focuses on helping clients with common applications. This service may include entry-level training for the clients or answering questions about the software – i.e., an entry-level consultation on which software is best or how to use it.
Advanced Hardware/Software Support. This service focuses on helping clients install, set up, or troubleshoot hardware or software issues. This support level isn’t considered basic and often requires a physical presence, devoted time, and research.
System Setup/Recovery. This service helps personnel migrate to new systems seamlessly. Technicians work to prepare new systems to meet NMSU compliance and migrate data/settings so that personnel can continue working on the new system will little to no disruption. Viral infections or system failure engage this service.
Software License Management. This service organizes site-wide licenses for our organizations. This service includes methods to request payment for renewals and processing payments. In addition, the Infrastructure Division research, negotiate and establish guidelines for new software contracts.
Account Management. This service creates or resets client credentials for various application uses. Also, clients are assigned the appropriate permissions. Authentication and authorization are issues based on guidelines produced by the Infrastructure Division.
Technical Sales. This service helps clients find and order technical equipment or software through reputable vendors. Also, this service sets up standards for common orders that include client systems, conference room equipment, and office peripherals.
Networking. This service conducts site surveys, designs internal networks, provides local and broadband wireless, establishes new ISP contracts, and audits network utilization and access. The service works with NMSU’s Central ICT, County IT, ACES IT’s Infrastructure Division, and local ISP to ensure compliance, uptime, or improvements. Only County Extension Offices and Agriculture Science Centers are offered this service.
Telecommunication. This service helps purchase, install, and configure PBX, Hybrid PBX, and VOIP services available through local ISP. Only County Extension Offices and Agriculture Science Centers are offered this service.
Program Support. This service helps departments, organizations, and student-led organizations design workflows and standard operating procedures. In addition, this service provides training on available technologies and includes all aspects of security/data compliance. This service provides group training, IT consultations, written technical guides, and training material.
IT Consultations. This service helps individual faculty, staff, and students properly utilize available technologies. This service is intended for one-to-one assistance and focuses more on a single application or technology that matches the client’s role or intent. These consultations offer training, in-depth interactions, testing, and research that exceed beyond Application Support.
IT Grant Writing. This service focuses on helping or acquiring funding to improve IT resources or assets. This service works as directed by College directors or central ICT. Consultation, IT resources, and data management plans are available to PIs upon request.
Special Events. This service advises and supports Special Events from a technological aspect. This service includes consultations, planning, purchasing, researching, and testing technologies to host events at various venues. This service usually helps support the event if Tier 2 or 3 Divisions aren’t required.
Server Support. This service consults, studies, designs, and implements systems and services to help others achieve their goals. This service goes beyond desktops or workstations to provide and support infrastructure (servers, integration services, networking, peripherals, and mobile devices) specialized to meet the needs of a department, organization, or project.
Security, Data, and License Compliance. This service audits and reports on the number of systems and services across our infrastructure that meet the required security and data compliance. Measurements provided in these reports determine hardware specifications, installed software versions, unpatched operating systems, device affinity, and compromised systems. All data derived from these measurements help determine security, data, and software license compliance (FERPA, HIPAA, PCI DSS, etc.).
Backup and Recovery. This service reflects and perceives flaws that result in total loss of mission-critical systems and services and acts to preserve them by developing a disaster recovery plan. This service preserves client systems, mobile devices, servers, host services, and edge networks.
High Availability. Backups help preserve data in the event of a disaster or ransomware. However, mission-critical operations would halt without data or access to required services while recovery procedures were ongoing. This service identifies and ensures mission-critical operations rely on redundant data storage and services (Distribution File Servers, Active Directory Domain Servers, Failover Hyper-V Cluster, etc.).
Application Development. This service designs, implements, and maintains web applications and programmable projects to meet researchers’ needs and expand departments’ capabilities.
Data Migration. This service focuses on migrating data from one system to another, converting large datasets to different formats, or creating SSIS packages to copy and process data from one database to another. Often, this service requires reverse engineering or technical experience.
Instrumentation Support. Lab instruments often connect to outdated computer systems and require costly maintenance and upgrades. This service helps students and faculty preserve and troubleshoot these instruments and the systems used to control them. Also, this service works to retain knowledge learned from students before they graduate and move on – preserving and reutilizing systems and techniques.
Divisions
Tier 1 Technology Support Division
The Tier 1 Technology Support Division (a.k.a. Helpdesk) aims to provide a support system that helps faculty, staff, and student with basic, routine Application Support, Software License Management, Account Management, and Technical Sales. Support that goes beyond basic troubleshooting, or requires a physical presence, is escalated to Tier 2 or Tier 3 (depending on location). Tier 1 division is staffed by a Tech Support Lead, Administrative Assistant Intermediate, and one Student Assistant.
Tier 2 Technology Support Division
The Tier 2 Technology Support Division aims to provide a support system that helps faculty, staff, and students with Tier 1 level support (if required), System Setup/Recovery, and more advanced Hardware and Software support. This division will include a Technology Support Lead, a Technology Support Senior, and two Student Assistants.
Tier 3 Technology Support Division
The Tier 3 Technology Support Division aims to provide a support system that helps faculty, staff, and students with Tier 2 level support plus Networking and Telecommunication Support. This division includes a System Analyst Lead and a System Analyst Senior.
Program Support Division
The Program Support Division aims to provide a support system to help departments and organizations with Program Support, IT Consultation, IT Grant Writing, and Special Events. This division includes a Program Support Specialist.
Infrastructure
The Infrastructure Division aims to provide a support system that helps departments and organizations meet data and security compliance by providing Server Support; Security, Data, and License Compliance; Backup and Recovery; and High Availability. One System Developer Senior staffs the division.
Research & Development
The Research and Development Division focuses on improving research and internal operations of departments, programs, and organizations by providing Application Development, Data Migration, and Instrumentation Support. Three students and a Program Analyst Intermediate staff this division.
