The Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg is the second-largest university in Bavaria.
For the nearly 10,000 employees and over 20,000 students, the Erlangen Regional Accounting Center, or RRZE, provides the latest information and communication technology.
The service counter is the central point of contact in the accounting center.
This is where user records are submitted and customers are advised in detail.
The information material submitted at the service counter is created in the accounting center's own office.
Creative minds are responsible for the optimal distribution of the accounting center's services and activities.
Important services of the accounting center are the procurement of hardware and software, as well as the installation and operation of the institute's computers.
The hardware components are not only procured by the accounting center, but also maintained.
If you want to apply for jobs for students or computers for research, you will be accompanied by a specialist step-by-step to the final realization.
The PC systems networked with Novel are supported via Windows, Unix workstations with the Sun Solaris operating system and Linux systems.
For scientific work on the computer, license-compliant software, so-called campus licenses, is also offered at the accounting center.
At present, about 26,000 licenses for about 200 different programs and program packages are used by the university and the regional universities.
The software is provided for download on a server and distributed on CD-ROM.
For the exchange of scientific data, the procured and installed computers within the university have to be networked with each other.
The accounting center has set up a data network that now covers the entire university.
Kilometer-long fiber-optic cables stretch across the whole of Erlangen and connect the individual buildings.
Where a cable installation is unprofitable, radio connections continue to help.
For mobile users, radio networks are set up in heavily frequented residential areas.
Switches and routers are used for transmitting data. The German scientific network forms the transition to the Internet.
The accounting center provides the university's central web servers with over 200 individual web appearances from lecture halls and institutions.
More than 16 million accesses per month are processed by the web servers.
If there is a disruption, a management system helps to quickly localize the error and inform the user.
If a customer wants to report a disruption, cancel an installation order or need an appointment for advice, they contact the accounting center's helpdesk.
Requests can be made via web, telephone or fax, which are promptly processed.
The accounting center's mail server takes over the university's e-mail connection to the Internet.
For about 30,000 university members, it transports about 40,000 mails per day.
This service is also available to users who choose to log into the university's home communications network.
Finally, the multimedia service of the accounting center can be used.
Simultaneous lecture broadcasts and videoconferences between several locations enable virtual learning and up-to-date research exchanges across university borders.
In addition to the provision of multimedia equipment, the handling of technology is individually communicated.
In addition, the customer can plot their own poster designs in the accounting center.
In order to keep up with new developments in the field of communication, various research projects are carried out at the accounting center.
They are financed by the association for the promotion of the German research network.
In the project UNITV, television broadcasts via the network are produced online with professional partners.
These are made available via the Internet and broadcast on television.
As a laboratory of the science network WIN, the accounting center examines the services in the German-wide network
and tests the communication facilities of the next generation.
The High-Performance Computing Group of the accounting center, together with scientists from the Friedrich-Alexander-University,
develops innovative programming techniques for current high-performance computers.
In recent years, the IT training program has been continuously expanded at the accounting center.
At several training locations, professionally qualified employees hold various courses around the computer.
The trainees, who have chosen the career path of a computer scientist in the field of system integration, undergo a completely different kind of training.
For three years, they experience the entire range of information technology at the accounting center.
The jewel of the accounting center is the Informatik Sammlung Erlangen, or ISER for short.
The collection ranges from the replicas of the earliest mathematical devices,
to functional original mechanical computers,
to the heart pieces of large computers, which were the pride of every accounting center until recently.
Guides can be made available via the service counter.
The entire service range of the accounting center can be found on the Internet.
A visit is worth it.