In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, universities must utilize a robust IT infrastructure to meet their educational and operational goals. At UBC, we understand the importance of establishing clear and effective technology standards to guide our IT practices. These standards not only enhance our academic environment but also ensure secure and efficient operations, equipping our constituents for success in an increasingly digital world
Overview
UBC Technology Standards provide a common foundation for selecting and using information technologies across the university. They ensure our tools and platforms are secure, reliable, and aligned with UBC’s teaching, learning, research, and administrative priorities.
By following these standards, UBC:
- Protects sensitive information and meets compliance requirements.
- Streamlines technology choices and reduces duplication.
- Improves user experience through consistent, supported tools.
- Enables innovation on a trusted, shared foundation.
Importance of Technology Standards
Technology standards are essential for UBC to:
- Protect information assets and reduce security risks.
- Simplify the technology landscape by reducing duplication and technical debt.
- Enable interoperability so systems and tools work together effectively.
- Optimize investments by leveraging enterprise solutions.
- Support UBC’s academic and administrative mission through reliable, scalable services.
Standards also provide clarity for faculty, staff, and IT partners by identifying which technologies are approved, supported, or being phased out.
Applicability Statement
These standards apply to:
- All UBC faculties, departments, and administrative units.
- All IT service providers delivering solutions to or on behalf of UBC.
- Vendors and partners when supplying or supporting technology for the university.
They cover both enterprise-level technologies and local implementations where alignment with university-wide standards is required.
Where deviations are needed, teams are encouraged to engage early with the Enterprise Architecture group to discuss options.
Key Areas of Focus
UBC Technology Standards are developed and published across several domains:
- Security & Compliance
Identity & Access Management (IAM) Standards
Ensures secure and efficient management of user identities, authentication, and access to university resources. Includes user registration, credential issuance, authentication, and single sign-on standards. - End User
Productivity & Collaboration Standards
Guides tools that enhance teamwork, communication, and individual productivity across the university. Includes visual collaboration, note-taking, event management, surveys, remote access, task management, and collaborative workspaces. - Data Center (placeholder)
Covers enterprise data center operations and facilities standards to ensure reliable, scalable infrastructure. - Compute (placeholder)
Standards for servers, Unix, midrange, mainframe, and converged infrastructure to support university applications and services. - Storage (placeholder)
Standards for online and offline storage solutions, ensuring secure and reliable data management. - Network (placeholder)
Standards for LAN/WAN, voice, and transport infrastructure to enable consistent connectivity and communication. - Platform (placeholder)
Standards for databases, container orchestration, middleware, big data, and data operations to support scalable and interoperable systems. - Output (placeholder)
Standards for central printing and output management to streamline document delivery and reduce duplication. - Application (placeholder)
Standards and Guidelines for application development, support, operations, and business software to ensure maintainable and compliant solutions. - Delivery (placeholder)
Standards for IT service management, operations centers, program/project/product management to ensure efficient service delivery. - IT Management (placeholder)
Standards and Guidelines for IT management, strategic planning, enterprise architecture, IT finance, vendor management, human capital, and data management.