Global Network Operations Center at IU announces organizational changes to better serve partners and foster excellence in the R&E network realm

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The nation’s largest research and education network operations center, the GlobalNOC at Indiana University, recently revamped its organizational structure and goals to better serve its dozens of network partners.

The new structure and priorities will enable GlobalNOC to continue its decades of success, while positioning its teams to more efficiently and effectively work together to meet the needs of its partners.

“These changes will help GlobalNOC continue to grow, to strengthen our partnerships, and to drive excellence in delivering network operations services to support research, education, and the public interest,” said David E. Jent, IU associate vice president for networks. “We are confident that these changes will serve the GlobalNOC and our partners well now and into the future.”

The leadership changes, effective immediately, are:

• Marianne Chitwood is Executive Director of GlobalNOC Client Services. In this role, Marianne is responsible for our business operations and development, customer relationship management, project management, and service desk. Additionally, Marianne provides executive relationship sponsorship and support for Internet2 and N-Wave. Marianne is also Executive Director for the I-Light network and the Indiana GigaPOP.
• Luke Fowler is Executive Director of Software and Network Engineering, overseeing GlobalNOC's software, systems, and network engineering efforts. Luke is focused on ensuring operational excellence and continued innovation for our network engineering services and our network management, measurement, and monitoring tools.
• Chris Robb is Director of Internet2 Network Engineering and Internet2 Customer Relationship Manager. Chris directs the overall activity of the Internet2 NOC. In this role, Chris has direct responsibility for GlobalNOC’s network engineering support of Internet2, in close partnership with Internet2 staff. Chris is also responsible for coordination, support, and advocacy for Internet2 across the GlobalNOC organization as a whole.
• Caren Litvanyi is Director of N-Wave Network Engineering and N-Wave Customer Relationship Manager. In this role, Caren leads the N-Wave Network Engineering team, working in close partnership with staff at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Caren also manages the overall activity at GlobalNOC supporting N-Wave, managing N-Wave’s priorities across the GlobalNOC organization and serving as an advocate for N-Wave within GlobalNOC.
• David Ripley is Interim Director, Software and Systems. David has overall responsibility for the software and systems area of GlobalNOC. We expect to make a permanent assignment to this position imminently.
• Caroline Weilhamer is Director of Member Services and Community Engagement for I-Light. In this role, Caroline has responsibility for research and community engagement among the diverse I-Light community.  
• Tom Johnson is Chief Technology Officer for I-Light and the Indiana GigaPOP. In this role, he provides leadership for the I-Light and GigaPOP network engineering team. Tom also provides management, monitoring, and oversight for I-Light and the Indiana GigaPOP's optical network, directs the technical vision, and leads all aspects of I-Light and the GigaPOP's technical direction.

We will be posting a position for a manager of the Regional Network Engineering team, reporting to Luke Fowler. Caroline Weilhamer and David Hunter will continue to lead this team until we have a new manager in place.

These changes align with the outcomes of the recently completed GlobalNOC Renewal Program and the ongoing efforts of GlobalNOC’s Leadership Council. The renewal program saw the creation of new roles such as the Customer Relationship Manager, Software Superuser, and Advanced Triage Technician to enable easier, clearer, and more effective interactions with GlobalNOC. This has proved especially effective for work that uses resources spanning GlobalNOC teams and teams at our partner organizations, and the idea is to build on this success.

New goals for the new fiscal year

In addition to making these leadership changes, the GlobalNOC team has been closing out fiscal year 2020-2021 priorities and setting new ones for 2021-2022. They include:

• Working with partners to create and maintain a “top 10” list of their requests. This is part of an ongoing effort to create a fair and transparent system for GlobalNOC partners to be able to prioritize their requests to the team.
• Continuing to work on our “Portals” project to provide richer, more integrated, dashboard-style interfaces to GlobalNOC services and data. Staff will also continue to focus on automation as a priority, expanding from network configuration automation to application of automation in other areas of GlobalNOC. (Read about last year’s progress here.)
• Improving coordination and communication across all GlobalNOC teams. Our Leadership Council team will be engaged in a project over the next year to look for ways to be more successful in this area.
• Launching the Service Desk review. GlobalNOC is looking for people interested in participating in this project, both on the GlobalNOC staff and from partners. Please contact Marianne Chitwood or Luke Fowler if you are interested in participating.