Sun Microsystems provides crucial technology

It’s an automated teacher’s aide for the Advanced Resource Classrooms of Wallenberg Hall, a power tool that monitors and warns of equipment problems for the technology support team, and a set-up wizard and time saver for university administrators.

Conductor, the scheduling and configuration program created in parallel with the design and building of Wallenberg Hall, allows all this and more. In June, 2003, a Sun Academic Equipment Grant to SCIL provided a contemporary platform on which to run Conductor, replacing the outdated collection of gear used in its development. The code for Conductor was developed during the building of Wallenberg Hall, funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation of Sweden.

The Sun system supports a streamlined approach to everything from setting Wallenberg Hall classroom light levels and switching on large video conferencing screens to checking projector lamp hours and reporting problems via email. It can even change a disk so that each teacher’s individual preferences, applications and files are available during his or her class, then put away and protected after class is over. And it’s all automatic.

“ Conductor is built to be tough,” says Robert Smith, Director of Technology Services. “As a system, it looks very much like an e-commerce platform, built to provide data security and integrity with a very high level of reliability. Sun’s expertise in providing much of the infrastructure that has made the Internet culturally and economically vital is what led us to decide to build Conductor on that platform. We’ve been extremely happy with the results.”

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