Are you a SUNY or affiliated IT professional? If the answer is yes, you’ve found your people. The Computing Officer’s Association (COA) represents those who implement, support, and manage the technology systems on the 64 campuses as well as administrative and support organizations throughout SUNY.

We’ve been Bringing SUNY Technology Professionals together for decades though our listserv, regional forums, mentorship program, and our partnerships with the Wizard and SUNY Technology Conferences. With about a thousand members from every corner of the state we truly represent your professional interests and want to help you succeed and grow your career.

All SUNY attendees are welcome to this COA meeting.

• What is it, how does it work, how do you do wildcards.
• Implementing automations for Linux servers, FortiGate firewalls and Aruba ClearPass, Airwave and Mobility conductors/controllers.
• How do you work with non-internet connected servers.

AI is being looked at across the academic enterprise at SUNY to identify opportunities for improving student success and supporting faculty innovators seeking to improve their teaching practices. At SUNY, we have provided a range of support and funding opportunities for faculty to explore AI in teaching and learning. We are also leading two Digital Transformation Project initiatives – AI Tutor and AI in Advising to consider where AI can augment the work of faculty and tutors in supporting student academic success at the course level, and where AI can be used to enhance and complement advising work across SUNY campuses. SUNY Online, the Office of Library and Information Services, and SUNY OER Services, also have AI-based initiatives to explore where AI can be leveraged by faculty and in their workflows. Attend this session to get an update on current projects and initiatives and to share what is happening on your campus in this space.

Institutional chatbots are becoming a common feature across higher education campuses, yet some may struggle to move beyond basic FAQ functionality or lose trust over time due to lack of direction. This session presents a practical, experience-driven framework for maintaining institutional chatbots that support both student and employee needs.

Drawing on real-world implementation experience at the University at Albany, this presentation introduces three core pillars for successful chatbot programs: providing support when users need it, grounding chatbot intelligence with institutional sources, and managing chatbot services as long-term infrastructure. Attendees will explore how these pillars help reduce friction, improve access to information, and create more trustworthy digital interactions.

The session emphasizes governance, content stewardship, and lifecycle management as critical success factors, offering actionable guidance for offices and campus partners seeking to adopt and deploy chatbot processes and initiatives responsibly. Participants will leave with an understanding about practical starting points that can be adapted across campus environments, regardless of size or technical maturity.

This session will explore leadership lessons from Ted Lasso and compare them to recent IT organizational changes that have been made at SUNY Brockport. These changes were made July 1, 2025, with an alignment of IT Services across the university.

Many SUNY institutions operate with small IT teams facing expanding expectations across cybersecurity, AI, data, and enterprise systems. At the same time, recent system-wide discussions have highlighted a shared desire for greater collaboration and shared services—alongside common barriers such as limited staffing, funding constraints, and institutional culture.

This birds-of-a-feather session invites participants to engage in an open, facilitated discussion about these shared challenges and opportunities. Using insights from recent SUNY conversations as a starting point, participants will explore why similar problems are often addressed independently, where collaboration has been successful, and what it would take to move toward more shared solutions.

The session is designed to be interactive, with minimal presentation and a focus on peer learning and candid conversation.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will:

• Identify common challenges faced by small IT teams across SUNY institutions
• Share strategies for prioritization, resource management, and navigating competing demands
• Explore opportunities for collaboration and shared services across campuses
• Discuss practical steps to overcome cultural and organizational barriers to working together

What does it take to successfully launch a Women in Technology (WIT) program that engages, inspires, and sustains momentum across a campus community? WITness the Launch shares the story behind the development of the Buffalo State WIT chapter, an initiative aligned with the broader SUNY WIT network, designed to connect individuals who use technology in their careers, promote collaboration, gender diversity, and highlight innovation across campus.

This birds of a feather session will provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the program was built from the ground up, including strategies for gaining institutional support, forming an advisory committee, establishing program goals, and creating meaningful opportunities for engagement. Attendees will learn how targeted communication, campus partnerships, and event planning, such as a successful pre-launch tied to International Women’s Day, helped generate excitement and visibility.

In addition, the presentation will highlight key components of the official launch event, which showcases real-world applications of technology through campus initiatives like Bengala+, Runway, procurement systems. and AI. These examples demonstrate how technology supports creativity, operations, and innovation in diverse ways across the institution.

Please join us to share your WIT launch experiences and exchange ideas across SUNY campuses. Thank you.

Join your fellow conference attendees for the evening reception in our technology exhibit hall. Food and beverages served. Prize pulls from our featured vendors will begin at 5:30pm and will adhere to the following schedule:

• 5:30 – Amazon
• 5:35 – Crowdstrike
• 5:40 – Howard
• 5:45 – HPE
• 5:50 – Insight
• 5:55 – Mythics
• 6:00 – Newpush
• 6:05 – Nysernet
• 6:10 – NYSTEC
• 6:15 – Veeam
• 6:20 – Salesforce
• 6:25 – Yuja
• 6:30 – Zoom
• 6:35 – Dell
• 6:40 – QNA Tech
• 6:45 – Forsyte

Join us at the conclusion of the technology exhibit for the Tuesday night dinner. Carving stations featuring surf and turf will complement a host of side dishes and cocktails as we continue our discussions of the day’s events. Our formal evening program will begin towards the end of dinner with updates from our organizations, partners, and award recipients.

We continue the annual tradition of an STC board game night! Come and relax, have fun, and get to know your fellow SUNY folks in one of the quieter settings of the week. No experience necessary – attendees will be taught how to play any games. The host will provide some games, but please bring any of your favorites if you’re willing to teach others how to play!

Banner and the future of Banner are the topics on everyone’s mind. Come to this session to hear an update on Banner, Ellucian, and SICAS.

What happens when low-code development meets generative AI? In this interactive session, we will show how to move from a real-world business problem to a working Microsoft 365 Power Apps solution using Copilot in Power Apps. Participants will help shape the session as we build a live demo application using Plans in Power Apps, a copilot-first design experience that can turn natural language prompts—and even supporting artifacts like process diagrams or screenshots—into user requirements, a Dataverse-backed data model, and recommended solution components. Those components can include canvas apps, model-driven apps, Power Automate flows, Power Pages sites, and Copilot Studio agents.

Using a higher education lens, we will show how Copilot-assisted design can speed up ideation, strengthen stakeholder collaboration, and shorten the path from concept to prototype. We will also cover the practical considerations for adoption, including Dataverse and environment prerequisites, required permissions, governance, and the need for human review and refinement throughout the process.

Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of where Copilot adds value in the app design process, what a live build experience looks like, and how they can apply these techniques to their own campus solutions.

This Birds-of-a-Feather session invites programmers to discuss current technical challenges and compare approaches across SUNY campuses. Topics may include Banner programming, Ellucian Experience development, Argos report writing, database and SQL work, integrations, automation, and other issues raised by attendees.

When AiM was first implemented in 2016, it replaced the Building Characteristics Inventory (BCI) as the system of record for property for SUNY. AiM also replaced the Physical Space Inventory (PSI), tracking rooms, seating capacity, how they are used and who is using them.

Stop and think about how many systems at your campus have building numbers/abbreviations and room locations in them. Your scheduling application, phones, directories, and countless others are maintaining the exact same data as AiM.

Come and ask questions about AiM, what information is available in it, and more importantly how you can access this data with a REST API developed by the Fund.

A space to discuss TeamDynamix (TDX) topics and questions.

We’ve all bought the “must-read” business books, but how many have changed the way you work? In this high-impact book list swap, we’re moving beyond the bestseller list to share the specific titles that provided a “lightbulb moment” for our careers. Whether it helped you master the art of the salary negotiation, dismantle imposter syndrome, or lead a team with more empathy, bring the title that gave you your biggest professional ROI or join us and hear what has helped other CIOs in their careers. You’ll leave with a list of tried-and-tested wisdom from current SUNY CIOs and a room full of mentors.

Join us for our special Wednesday morning tech exhibit featuring our Silver Booth Brunch! Enjoy brunch food and mimosas from 9am to 11am on the tech floor.

The State University of New York (SUNY) system operates at significant scale across diverse campuses and missions. As SUNY modernizes its IT environment, a flexible, secure cloud strategy is essential to support innovation, efficiency, and collaboration.

In this session, attendees will learn how Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), combined with strategic multicloud integrations, enables SUNY campuses to run mission-critical workloads—such as student information systems (SIS), ERP, HR, and research platforms—with enhanced performance and interoperability. We will highlight how a multicloud approach allows SUNY to leverage existing investments while integrating with leading hyperscale providers, supporting a more open, flexible, and future-ready architecture.

The session will also examine key priorities for SUNY, including data sharing across campuses, advancing research computing, improving student and faculty experiences, and maintaining compliance with evolving regulatory standards. Learn how Oracle’s distributed cloud and multicloud capabilities help address these challenges by enabling secure data access, high-performance database services, and seamless workload portability.

Through practical examples and strategic insights, this session will provide you with actionable guidance to reduce complexity, optimize costs, and build a resilient digital foundation. Discover how Oracle Multicloud can empower SUNY to deliver system-wide innovation while supporting the unique needs of each campus community.

Sixteen SUNY campuses are doing something right. This session is about finding out exactly what that is — in their own words.

Any vendor can sell you a platform. Not every partner shows up at 2am. With 16 campuses already live on Guardian Select, Forsyte has become something most institutions rarely find in a vendor: a genuine extension of their team — one that knows their environment, anticipates their needs, and goes well beyond the ticket when it matters most.

This roundtable brings those campus voices together in one room. No polished case studies. No vendor narrative. Just security professionals from your peer institutions telling you what they wish they’d known sooner — and what’s made the difference.

You’ll hear directly from your peers on:

• What 24×7 monitoring looks and feels like when it actually operates as your team
• How campuses are operationalizing Microsoft security across identity, endpoint, email, and cloud — without burning out lean internal staff
• The moments where Forsyte went above and beyond — and why that made all the difference
• How a shared SUNY community approach is raising the security floor for every campus involved

The technology matters. But in higher education — with constrained teams, growing threat surfaces, and no margin for error — it’s the people behind the platform that determine whether security actually works.

Come hear what’s working across the SUNY community — and take something back to your campus.

Facilitated by Forsyte | An open discussion for the SUNY security community

Insight Public Sector, in partnership with the Apple Higher Education team, invites you to explore how Apple Silicon is transforming AI and research computing on campus.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are reshaping research workflows, and institutions are rapidly expanding access to AI-capable endpoints. With Apple Silicon, every Mac includes a dedicated Neural Engine that accelerates AI and ML workloads while maintaining strong security and privacy. From running large language models locally to integrating with secure, cloud-based services, Apple Silicon offers a powerful, energy‑efficient platform for faculty, students, and research staff.

In this session, you will:

• Examine Apple Silicon architecture and the Neural Engine as they relate to today’s AI and ML workflows
• Learn how Private Cloud Compute enables access to larger server-based models while protecting sensitive data
• See demonstrations of public large language models (LLMs) running efficiently on Apple Silicon Macs
• Explore patterns for hybrid local/cloud AI workflows across teaching, research, and administrative use cases

You’ll leave with practical ideas for how Macs can support AI‑enhanced teaching and research, leveraging built‑in macOS features, a growing third‑party app ecosystem, and optimized hardware designed for AI workloads.

At Howard Technology Solutions, we understand that managing a campus ecosystem requires more than just hardware—it requires a partner who handles the heavy lifting of procurement and deployment. My goal is to introduce you to the “Howard Advantage,” a unique blend of our own high-performance manufactured products and strategic partnerships with industry leaders like Lenovo, HP, and Microsoft. Whether you are looking to scale virtualization and cybersecurity, upgrade interactive lecture halls, or build out an eSports program, we provide a single point of contact for the entire technical lifecycle. Supported by over 500 in-house engineers and 24/7 US-based technical support, we don’t just sell technology; we design, install, and manage it to ensure your infrastructure is future-proof and secure. I look forward to showing you how our hands-on approach can simplify your IT challenges and provide the reliable, end-to-end support your institution needs.

Intel® Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel® AMX) is a built-in AI accelerator integrated into every core of 4th, 5th, and 6th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors (and Intel® Xeon® 6 with P-cores). This presentation explores how AMX delivers massive performance gains for deep learning training and inference directly on general-purpose CPUs — without requiring discrete GPUs. Attendees will learn the architecture of AMX (including 2D tile registers and the Tile Matrix Multiplication unit), supported data types (INT8 and BF16), and how it dramatically accelerates matrix operations central to AI workloads such as natural language processing (NLP), recommendation systems, image recognition, and large language model (LLM) inference. Real-world benchmarks show up to 8–16× more operations per cycle compared to prior AVX-512 implementations, with real-time inference improvements of 2–10× (and higher performance-per-watt) versus previous-generation Xeon processors and competitive platforms. The session covers practical enablement using libraries like oneDNN, OpenVINO, and frameworks such as TensorFlow and PyTorch, along with optimization best practices, TCO benefits, and deployment scenarios in on-premises, virtualized (e.g., VMware), and cloud environments.

Ideal for organizations seeking cost-effective, scalable CPU-based AI without GPU dependency.

Some SUNY campuses are getting far more out of Nysernet than just connectivity—are you one of them? Join Rebecca Werner, Director of Membership, and Emilyann Fogarty, CISO, for a candid look at how institutions are actively leveraging Nysernet services to expand capabilities, reduce costs, and support their teams.

From shared services and strategic partnerships to professional development and collaboration opportunities, we’ll highlight how members are turning participation into real operational and institutional value. You’ll leave with concrete ideas you can apply immediately—whether you’re looking to do more with existing resources or explore new opportunities within the consortium.

As an added bonus, one session attendee will receive a professional development course credit valued at $1,000, powered by StormWind Studios.

At SUNY Brockport, we needed a way to give departments secure access to sensitive files in Microsoft Teams, without relying on shared network drives, shared accounts, or hoping people would follow best practices on their own. This session walks through how we built it using our A5 M365 licensing, including: sensitivity labels on Teams and SharePoint that enforce Conditional Access policies, requiring compliant Intune-managed devices with up-to-date Defender, data encryption, and phishing-resistant MFA through Windows Hello/Passkeys. We’ll cover the technical configuration, from device compliance policies and sensitivity label setup to blocking access from unmanaged devices or high risk users, as well as the practical side.

Many might prefer to bury their heads in the sand and hope that artificial intelligence is just a passing storm. But the reality is clear: AI is reshaping higher education whether we’re ready or not. At SUNY Oneonta, we’ve chosen to meet this moment head on. Instead of resisting the disruption, we are harnessing it—mobilizing our campus community to actively build the future we want with AI rather than letting it happen to us.

This presentation pulls back the curtain on the macro and micro politics of leading institution wide change. We will share the strategies, missteps, insights, and breakthroughs that shaped our approach, along with the methodology that helped us construct a strong, community driven foundation for an AI roadmap that truly reflects our campus values.

Together, we’ll explore our challenges, celebrate our successes, imagine what’s possible next, and learn from one another as we navigate this rapidly evolving landscape.

ITEC continues to be the premier choice for SUNY campuses seeking expert assistance in navigating the complexities of the digital landscape. We continue to evolve as a trusted technology partner for SUNY campuses, further expanding services and strengthening our operational excellence over the past year. This session offers a focused update on key initiatives across infrastructure, security, service management, resource management, and project delivery—highlighting how these efforts enhance stability, efficiency, and support for campus needs.

Join us for an overview of our progress, the impact of our ongoing evolution, and a look ahead at how ITEC will continue empowering campuses across our SUNY Family in an increasingly complex digital landscape.

Managing accessible resources at scale is one of the most persistent operational challenges facing higher education IT teams today. This session explores how IDS Network has brought together three powerful tools: CrossLink, Remediation Server, and EMMA to build a cohesive, automated accessibility workflow that reduces manual effort, accelerates document remediation, and ensures equitable access to shared resources across the institution.

CrossLink, developed by IDS Network at SUNY Geneseo, facilitates resource sharing across campuses and systems, enabling institutions to efficiently distribute and access shared content, services, and materials. The AWS Remediation Server complements this by automating the conversion of inaccessible documents into ADA-compliant formats at scale, freeing IT and disability services staff from time-consuming manual remediation. EMMA (Educational Materials Made Accessible), now transitioning to IDS Network at SUNY Geneseo, rounds out the ecosystem by enabling DSO and library staff to share and access remediated educational materials across institutions, eliminating redundant effort system-wide.

We will walk through implementation decisions, technical configurations, and measurable outcomes including reduced remediation turnaround times and improved consistency in accessible content delivery. Attendees will leave with a replicable framework for building an integrated, automated accessibility workflow at their own institutions.

Discuss how we designed and implemented AVoIP in a newly renovated building.

• Discuss initial design and what changes were made
• Who we had to get involved with to make this happen
• How we did most of the work in-house to save on costs
• Any challenges/difficulties we faced implementing AVoIP
• Benefits and drawbacks of using AVoIP compared to our older classrooms
• Potential use cases when expanding AVoIP to more of campus (i.e. watching special events from any classroom on campus)

This presentation provides a practical, experience-driven overview of configuring Microsoft Teams Telephony in an enterprise higher‑education environment. It walks through the end‑to‑end architecture used at SUNY Delhi, covering tenant‑level configuration, security group design, voice and emergency policies, and real‑world call flow implementation. Topics include Direct Routing with SBC/SBA redundancy, dial plans and routing rules, Auto Attendants, Call Queues, Shared Calling, and dynamic e911 using Location Information Services. The session emphasizes how Microsoft 365 security groups are leveraged consistently across Teams Admin Center, Entra ID, and Intune to simplify policy assignment, user onboarding, and device compliance. Multiple call flow diagrams demonstrate how departmental structures translate into scalable, resilient voice solutions, including callback behavior, overflow handling, and after‑hours routing. Rather than a prescriptive “best practice” guide, this talk focuses on lessons learned, design tradeoffs, and tested configurations from a working production environment. It is intended for IT professionals who are new to Teams Phone or looking to better understand how its many components fit together in practice.

As SUNY campuses move rapidly from AI experimentation to institutional adoption, approaches vary widely. Some institutions are forming task forces and developing governance frameworks, while others are piloting tools and identifying use cases across academic and operational areas.

At the same time, there is growing interest in shared services and system-wide alignment—raising important questions about where consistency across SUNY makes sense and where local flexibility is essential.

This panel brings together technology leaders from multiple SUNY campuses to discuss how they are organizing AI efforts, developing policy and governance, and identifying meaningful use cases. Panelists will share practical experiences, including successes, challenges, and lessons learned, while also exploring the balance between local innovation and broader system alignment.

6GHz Wi-Fi (utilized by Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7) provides a massive, uncongested, “superhighway” for data, offering exceptionally fast speeds, significantly lower latency, and higher capacity for devices. This session will introduce you to the 6GHz spectrum and whether it be a replacement, complement or something else.

Cloud vendor analysis and Title II requirements have increased the workload in the day-to-day procurement pipeline. As work continues towards maintaining compliance with the collection and analysis of HECVAT and VPAT documents, new workflows and methods must be developed to increase efficiency and keep procurement moving. Please join us at this birds-of-a-feather session to discuss with your colleagues your methods for handling these documents or learn how to get started on the journey to compliance!

Join your peers at a panel discussion where a brief overview of the project goals and progress is shared, and a panel of SUNY technologists give highlights from their work on the project. In addition, plenty of time will be devoted to Q&A. SUNY peers from any institution may attend regardless of their participation in the ASAP or ACE programs.

Our follow-up presentation will highlight the continued expansion of the Assisted Listening Project in partnership with the SUNY Cortland Disabilities Resources Office.

Since our last conference presentation at STC in June 2025 we have installed an additional 31 microphones, 16 in Summer 2025 and 15 for Spring 2026, bringing the total to 51 microphones across 50 classrooms. With this progress, we have reached nearly 50% of our applicable instructional spaces.

In addition to expanding hardware deployment, we are rolling out the server-based versions of Sennheiser Control Cockpit and MobileConnect Manager. We have also upgraded our Dante Domain Manager to support 20 domains, improving scalability, security, and system management.

The installation process includes network configuration, device synchronization, and strategic microphone placement to ensure clear and consistent audio pickup. Each classroom is equipped with a Sennheiser TCCM microphone utilizing beamforming technology. Audio is transmitted via Dante to MobileConnect units housed in our Master Control Center. Dante Domain Manager and Dante Controller manage audio distribution, while Sennheiser Control Cockpit provides centralized configuration and monitoring. We are also evaluating Sennheiser’s DeviceHub cloud-based monitoring platform to help with monitoring the mics and any additional Sennheiser devices on our campus.

This session will present an overview of the newly launched SUNY Research Connect, a comprehensive and accessible portal that empowers discovery, collaboration, and innovation among researchers within SUNY and beyond. SUNY Research Connect, a Digital Transformation Project initiative, shines a spotlight on systemwide research and aggregates expert researcher profiles from 26 campuses, including campuses administering their own branded portals (University at Buffalo, Stony Brook University, and Upstate Medical University) and NY Creates. It is a single portal with information about nearly 7,000 active SUNY researchers and their work – including publications, research projects and funding – all in one place. The platform also collects research equipment profiles to expand information about and access to robust, cutting-edge research infrastructure used and available on SUNY campuses.

Discussion of multi-campus and System Administration collaboration and planning during the project will inform future efforts for shared infrastructure development.

A live demonstration will guide you through the public portal, showcasing how to effectively search for experts, publications, active grants, and shared equipment across the 26 participating campuses.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this session, attendees will be able to articulate the strategic role research infrastructure, including SUNY Research Connect and a Research Data Repository, in advancing SUNY’s research.