At 2 p.m., Oct. 10, University Information Services (UIS) announced the completion of a year-long project to move the University of Colorado systemwide data center from its Denver location to a new, modern facility on the Anschutz Medical Campus.

The massive effort moved and set up more than 11 tons of equipment and required all four campuses and System Administration to be without access to data and systemwide applications for an extended period.

“Collaboration was the heartbeat of this work, not only within System Administration but throughout CU,” said Chief Information Officer and Associate Vice President Scott Munson. “We had incredible people harmonizing this complex effort across the university. When we ran into issues, teams worked overnight to find a resolution and all four campuses rose to the occasion as ‘One CU’.”

Munson thanked Senior Director of Enterprise Cloud Services Tony Brooks, Communications lead Deirdre Keating, Principle Project Manager Steve Thormod and the contributing UIS teams including Identity and Access Management, Integrations, Networking, Communications and Quality Assurance. In addition to the UIS teams, Munson emphasized the contributions from the Procurement, Legal, Security, Facilities, Planning Department, Traffic Control and Anschutz Office of Information Technology (OIT).

“We’re grateful to Sheard Goodwin, director of Enterprise Network and Hosting, and Steve Stelzer, the data center manager, who partnered with us for more than a year and whose work will have a positive impact on the entire university. Thanks also to each campus’ OIT and system administration colleagues for their work ensuring students, faculty and staff on every campus were prepared for the interruption in services,” Munson said.

When the previous data center’s vendor changed its business model, CU had serious concerns that prioritized the move. Based on recommendations from CU’s legal team and IT Governance Committee, CU leadership decided the data center move was essential to delivering core services to the university. It was also vital the data center move take place with sufficient preparation rather than in a rushed, emergency scenario.

“All the planning and hard work paid off,” said Brooks. “While the needed extra day and a half was unanticipated, the team’s preparation and perseverance kept the downtime from being further extended."

Brooks added, “The move to the Anschutz Health Sciences Building Data Center allows UIS to continue to provide our core principles of data center delivery at a very high level: reliability, performance, security, and scalability. It also allowed an improvement to the fiber network ring that helps prepare UIS for future technological advances. This project had so many moving parts — figuratively and literally — and its completion is due to a joint effort by so many across the university, key vendors, and the support of CU Leadership. I am very proud of the work of the team and am excited for this new chapter for the university.”

The CU data center relocation marks a significant milestone for the university's technology infrastructure, enhancing its capabilities and supporting its mission to deliver cutting-edge research, education and service to Colorado and the world.