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New Zealand's Manukau: Sensibly on Sun
Established in 1970, Manukau Institute of Technology is one of New Zealand's premier education and training institutions. Manukau operates one of the five largest computer networks in New Zealand. The city of Manukau is part of the Auckland urban area, a modern, dynamic region with a population of 1.3 million people, progressive business sectors, a high technology direction, and a competitive skilled workforce.
Manukau's Disparate Systems Challenge
Faced with unreliable email and disparate, un-interoperable computing systems on campus, Manukau Computer Services Staff decided to:
- Implement a centralized computing environment
- Consolidate numerous email systems into one campus-wide communications platform
- Adopt an LDAP directory to provide a central control point for managing user accounts
"We had Novell NetWare, Microsoft Windows, and SCO UNIX in different locations on campus," said Christopher Stott, technical manager at Manukau. "Users and services were tied to servers that didn't tie to each other. Email was unreliable, people were upset, and finally we said, 'This is silly. We need to do something more sensible.'"
A Flexible Integration Platform
"We've been enthusiastic in our use of Sun's Directory Server, using it as a true directory of information and not restricting its use solely to user information. The directory is not a peripheral service but is at the center of information at this Institute."
Christopher Stott
Technical Manager, ICTS, Manukau Institute of Technology
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If you remember the Y2K hysteria, then you remember that no one was very clear on what computing would look like in the 2000s. Whatever platform was selected as the foundation on which to build into the future had to be adaptable and flexible enough to integrate legacy systems and provide access to them as new services were created. Manukau Institute of Technology chose Sun Microsystems to provide the platform and began implementing Sun Java System Directory Server and Sun Java System Messaging Server.
"We found Sun Java System Directory Server to be very interesting," said Stott. "It could be far more than just a listing of mailboxes, like an electronic telephone book. It could be used to manage user accounts and a lot more, like equipment on campus. We make very heavy use of Sun Java System Directory Server. It's probably the single most critical system we have on campus."
Sun Java System Messaging Server solved the email problem on campus as well. "We do over 50 million legitimate emails a year and it works day and night, providing the reliability we lacked in the old systems," said Systems Architect Scott Lawson. "We're quite happy with it."
Such performance has led Manukau Institute of Technology to become almost a total Sun Microsystems shop. "We pretty much have at least one of every Sun server," said Lawson. "We're currently looking at the performance of Sun's AMD Opteron processor-based servers versus some of the Intel boxes we have, and we also run a huge amount of open source software on top of our stable Solaris Operating System platform."
Manukau Institute of Technology continues to build upon Sun Java Enterprise System, currently implementing Sun Java System Identity Server and Sun Java System Access Manager to begin changing how the Institute manages student, faculty and staff accounts. And, beginning to look outside the Institute, they're determining how to deal with federated directories and repositories at other institutions around the world concerning issues like trust and data security.
As Manukau Institute of Technology has discovered, the reliability and stability of Sun products are important when your LDAP directory is the most critical system you have on campus.
Manukau Institute of Technology — At A Glance
| Main Campus: |
The City of Manukau, near Auckland, New Zealand |
| Total Students: |
Approximately 8000 FTEs |
| Faculty: |
Approximately 800 FTEs |
| Total Equity: |
$106 million Australian ($80 million USD) |
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