Volume 4. No 4
Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis December 1995
Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis December 1995
Keeping Projects on Track
When your paycheck rolls around like clockwork every month, one of the many people you can thank is Ray Reveles. Reveles and his staff help provide technical support to the computer payroll system, making sure that all 24,000 UC Davis employees receive paychecks on time. Reveles also oversees computer systems that operate the campus budget, salary costing, work study, staffing, and equipment inventory.
A programmer/analyst and manager in Information Resources, Reveles is also the main drive behind a number of special projects - the current one being the payroll/personnel data warehouse project scheduled for campus rollout in April. (See story on Page 1).
A 22-year veteran of UC Davis, Reveles has witnessed a sea of change from the early days of campus computing. He remembers when summertime meant slack or catch-up time, and he remembers when supporting campus computing meant maintaining the campus mainframe. But that was before the personal computer revolutionized computing. More recently, he observes, UC Davis computing has changed in other ways.
"The emphasis has shifted from building by the seat of our pants to utilizing a more structured development method," he notes. "Now we have a more professional, architectural approach that produces higher quality results." Reveles says the other big difference in campus computing is being more tuned-in to industry trends. "There's a real emphasis on utilizing new technology and finding ways to use technology to improve productivity," he says. "My personal hope is to help lead my unit into a world-class operation."
Providing Technical Support to Workstation Users
Personal computers hadn't even hit the market when Earl Bertram began his campus computing career. That was in 1978, when as a development engineer for Crocker Nuclear Lab, Bertram served as a consultant to departments using mini computers to do scientific computing.
Bertram helped the Nutrition department build an automated system for weighing rats, and he designed a lab system for the School of Veterinary Medicine. In those days, even the Campus Computer Center was one of Bertram's clients. Over the years, Bertram has watched the campus move from a central mainframe computing environment to the current distributed model, in which the bulk of the processing power resides right on the desktop.
Now, as part of I.T.'s Information Resources group, Bertram provides technical support and consultation to users of high-end workstations. His clients range from medical researchers to physicists. Bertram provides technical support and consultation to users of both Unix and VMS systems, but the bulk of his clients use DEC, SUN, or SGI workstations.
Bertram assists customers with software selection, configuration and maintenance. One of his co-workers, Ted Rallis, keeps track of all the software site licenses assigned to some 200 campus departments using technical workstations.
For instance, those interested in taking advantage of the new Oracle site license (See story on Page 3) may do so by contacting Rallis.
"My job is to serve as a liaison between our campus clients and the vendor," says Rallis, who recently graduated from UC Davis with degrees in Computer Science and Philosophy.
While Rallis, like Bertram, works to support technical needs on campus, they share a simple philosophy. That is to keep the customer happy.
Scanner at the CAIT
WordWand, a hand-held scanner, is available for testing at the Center for Advanced Information Technology (CAIT) on the first floor of Shields Library. For more information, visit the CAIT or look-up the evaluation on the Web at
http://cait.ucdavis.edu/content/hardware/short-term.html
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