CIO Monthly Note 11/13/15

Welcome to my new endeavor in which I will cover one or two current business topics that are pertinent to our college in a brief and less technical fashion.  My hope is you will all find this informative and better understand how our business systems work at the college.

World of Web Browsers

Most of us are familiar with the top web browsers (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox & Safari) and with good reason.

Browser Market Share from Net Market Share 2015

Did you know there are dozens of other relatively popular browsers (25.11% from above) that bring their own feature sets.  Each is trying to win the hearts of the people by offering different configurations and capabilities.  Here is a great article on a few of  them from Smashing Magazine – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/09/chrome-firefox-safari-opera-edge-impressive-web-browser-alternatives/

The Challenge for Applications

Each browser interacts with websites and web applications slightly differently.  Even new versions of the same browser can and will work differently from the previous version.  These two facts make it a constant challenge for applications like Banner, Blackboard Learn, CollegeNET, Microsoft OWA, HRCMS and thousands more to keep up and make sure all browsers will work with their current software offerings.

Here at NECC

We allow our users to use any browser they wish from their desktop computers or mobile devices.  While this allows a maximum level of freedom and choice it leaves us needing to encourage the use of particular browsers when connecting to our critical web-based applications.  The reason there is no one simple answer to access all system can be seen in a basic equation.  Let’s say we allow the use of only 5 browsers, we support only 5 versions of Java, we support only 5 operating systems and we support only 50 applications at the college.  The possible options are 5 x 5 x 5 x 50 = 6,250.  We actually  support much more than this and this is why we provide the Service Desk Support at x3111 to guide people through their particular scenario.

Information Technology Services is currently working on installing a patch which will once again allow the use of Chrome and Firefox to access MyNECC and integrated services.  This has been successful in our test environment and we are planning to move this into the production environment during the Thanksgiving recess.

Since this was a big topic I’m going to leave it to this one for the inaugural month.  If you have any questions, ideas or topics you would like me to cover in future months please reply to this email.

If you would like to get more involved with IT at the college please stop by one of the open Banner Users Group or I.T. Committee meetings.  If you need help finding these committees and their schedules on our website just let me know.