Last year, ITSS conducted a customer survey that revealed several product awareness concerns. The survey results suggest that a large number of clients are not aware of the services that ITSS offers and that many services are underutilized and their benefits not fully recognized by the departments. Clients expressed concern that ITSS speaks a different language by using internal acronyms that make it difficult to know what they're speaking about.
Marketing Services Goals
ITSS Marketing Services is dedicated to giving the client a thorough non-technical analysis and benefits explanation of a highly technical product. The Marketing Services team works with ITSS technical experts to analyze and develop promotional campaigns on services and to deliver the message to the University community in an effective way that allows clients to take advantage of available technology to further the University's mission of teaching, learning, and research.
ITSS Services Reviews
The team has established regularly scheduled ITSS Services Reviews that are designed to showcase computing technologies and services to the Stanford community. Invitations are sent to all department IT contacts for a two-hour presentation to hear more about the showcased services and the benefits they offer. The reviews are held in April, July, and October. The Marketing team selects the services to be showcased based on customer requests, current IT trends, ITSS staff, and time sensitive or critical applications.
Recently showcased services include:
- IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), a service that stores all your email on a central ITSS-managed server, giving you access to all your messages, old and new, at work, at home or anywhere a web browser is available.
- AFS (Andrew File System), an online disk storage system for organizing and maintaining computer data.
- DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) also known as high speed internet connection, provides the fastest remote Ethernet-level connectivity currently available between remote equipment, a home or remote office computer, and Stanford's networked computing resources.
- Access control technology for building and door entry that uses the Stanford ID card central database for controlled entry and access monitoring.
- Dealing with SPAM (also known as the computer junk mail), the single most annoying artifact of the Internet's success.
Marketing Campaigns
The team also works on marketing campaigns throughout the year to promote high profile and time critical services for the campus. Promotions include developing communication plans for reaching the affected client groups, working with the ITSS Documentation team to develop publications and web pages, and notifying the broader University community. Some recent marketing campaigns include:
- BigFix Patch Management to protect and secure your computer. See also Desktop Computer Security: Stanford's BigFix Patch Management Service in this issue.
- Sundial Calendaring to keep track of your meetings, appointments, and help organize your workday.
- Essential Stanford Software, a collection of applications that help you plug into the Stanford University Network (SUNet) and gain access to Stanford's computing services.
More Information
University department IT contacts are notified periodically with valuable computing updates via email, mailings, news articles, and publications. If you would like more information on ITSS Services Reviews or any of the ITSS services, please contact the Marketing Team at itss-marketing@lists.stanford.edu or call them at 725-HELP.
