Considering how IT is woven into every aspect of our lives, it’s hard to pick a few areas to highlight. Everything OIT does directly impacts every faculty, staff, student, and department within the University.

All across OIT, we are making technological advancements—big and small— that help advance the work of our faculty, staff, and students. With a cloud-first, Microsoft-first mindset, we are making great strides in ensuring our community has the resources it needs to excel.

Data-Reporting-Shift to Power BI

OIT is consolidating reporting on a central platform, Microsoft Power BI, a popular, user-friendly, and versatile data visualization and business intelligence tool. With Power BI, we can create interactive dashboards and reports from various data sources. As we review the current reports and move to Power BI, we anticipate retiring two platforms and decreasing active reports by 20%.

Stay Connected Anywhere

OIT ensures that the University of Tennessee remains at the cutting edge of technological innovation by offering a variety of communications and collaboration platforms, including Microsoft 365, RingCentral, 400 MHz radios, Digital Signage, Cellular and Public Safety DAS, and high-volume SMS texting. Our efforts support a seamless and efficient communication environment for all students, faculty, and staff, enhancing both academic and operational excellence.

In 2024, OIT moved 9,000 faculty and staff to a new cloud-based telephone system, RingCentral. With RingCentral, you can connect to your campus phone number from anywhere, including your office on campus or wherever you happen to be working. OIT is testing the RingCentral integration with Microsoft Teams – with this advancement, your phone, chat, and video calls can all happen in one place!

Classroom Upgrades

In 2024, OIT provided classroom upgrades (projectors, displays, recording systems, flexible screen sharing options, and easy-to-use control systems) to help faculty excel and keep students engaged. At the start of each semester, OIT provides tailored training to faculty in the classroom where they will be teaching.

OIT also consolidated two data centers into one, returning 2000 square feet to campus for classroom use.

Enhanced Learning Spaces for Students and Instructors 

Select campus-hosted classrooms across campus are improved annually to ensure the standardization of technology and to promote engaging learning environments for students.

Advanced Security, Identity & Access Management

One of the great strides taken last year by the newly formed Security Operations Center (SOC) was demonstrated by proactively addressing campus security by requiring all university-owned and grant-funded computers to use Microsoft Defender and all Windows computers enroll in Microsoft Intune.

Microsoft Defender, an antivirus and anti-malware program, works quietly in the background, scanning files, emails, and websites and notifying the Information Security’s Cyber Incident Response Team about potential threats, suspicious activities, or security breaches. This system assists the team to limit damage promptly and proactively.

Microsoft Intune ensures that university data stays secure and follows policy guidelines on desktops, workstations, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Intune provides security regardless of the device location and without requiring individual action.

83% of network traffic is malicious and is now blocked, dramatically reducing compromised systems.

Next • Research & Development →