The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) announced a repositioning of its organizational structure and management to better serve evolving customer and infrastructure requirements.
The move follows recommendations from advisory groups and last year’s strategic planning process to quickly adapt existing and future services and initiatives to the needs of a growing customer base.
“Given the new demands in supercomputing and networking, especially in the types of customers using these services, we simply could not continue with a ‘business as usual’ approach,” said Stanley C. Ahalt, executive director of OSC. “This new internal structure offers a robust and dynamic base from which we can leverage our significant strengths for our customers and provide new opportunities for growth.”
Many of OSC’s newest programs – such as Blue Collar Computing, the Ralph Regula School of Computational Science, and Shared Instrumentation over OSCnet (formerly Third Frontier Network) – will be integrated with established services. This realignment will better position the center for rapid implementation of advanced technologies and comprehensive project and customer management services.
OSC’s new structure is designed to align the organization to achieve several objectives:
- Offer an integrated customer service approach and expanded offerings to a growing academic and industry base
- Combine staff expertise areas to provide both a breadth and depth of support across and within service areas
- Provide a comprehensive project and customer management system
- Develop concentrated support for new initiatives, focusing on computational science, engineering, industry outreach, and state government communities
- Allow for rapid development and scalable deployment of new services that will enhance the success of OSC’s academic customers and Ohio's business and industry
Under the new organizational structure, a Technology Infrastructure Group will integrate supercomputing and networking services for the center, including high performance computing hardware and storage, network infrastructure, and engineering and planning activities. The combination also allows a comprehensive project management approach to serve each group of customers.
“This new structure will allow OSC to offer a comprehensive service desk and client services center to coordinate all requests from our computing and networking customers,” said Pankaj Shah, director of OSC networking, who is leading the Technology Infrastructure Group.
An Education and Client Support team will combine the efforts of the Supercomputing support staff, the Ralph Regula School of Computational Science, and emerging networking and training activities.
“Having a dedicated staff concentrating their efforts in computational science and engineering education and training will allow us to best meet the workforce and economic development needs of the state and nation,” said Steven Gordon, acting director of the Ralph Regula School, who is leading the Education and Client Support Group.
As an example of the reorganized customer service structure, a tiered support system will be developed that starts with the Technology Infrastructure service desk, includes the supercomputing science support staff and draws on the senior scientists and engineers in the Technology Infrastructure and Research and Development groups.
Other groups include Research and Development, which will develop and execute research programs and new business development solutions; Administration and Planning, which includes business operations and a new project office; Outreach, which offers marketing, public relations, and event management services; and Public Affairs and Public Policy, which develops relationships with local, state and federal government.
Celebrating 20 years of service, the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) is a catalytic partner of Ohio universities and industries that provides a reliable high performance computing and high performance networking infrastructure for a diverse statewide/regional community including education, academic research, industry, and state government. OSC promotes and stimulates computational research and education in order to act as a key enabler for the state's aspirations in advanced technology, information systems, and advanced industries. For additional information, visit http://www.osc.edu.
