​Dr. Waleed Abdulaziz Al-Jandal, Acting Dean of Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University Information Technology Deanship, has revealed recently the creative technological aspects and developments of Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in a focus-interview with .GOV Magazine. It is a bilingual monthly magazine for GCC’s government departments, public corporations, official entities and related institutions, as well as technology professionals and policy makers.

While his elegant personal photo appearing on the cover of the magazine current-month edition, Dr. Al-Jandal has shed lights on Al-Imam University’s most main points in the university’s strategic plan. “Improving the faculty and students’ tools that they want to use, it has to be done on the technology side. Technology is making life easy for the students and faculty”, said he.

Continued his words, Dr. Al-Jandal has stated that, Al-Imam University has undertaken a number of major projects to upgrade its IT infrastructure and to implement new services. The university has 18 colleges and institutes, and all of their requirements had to be collected and considered in the creation of the strategic plan for IT. “One of the first major projects undertaken as part of the plan was the upgrade of the data centre’s core switch, and the virtualisation of its servers. It now hosts almost all of the university’s applications, and because of the level of performance, Al-Imam University is now considering offering data centre services for other universities, such as application hosting or disaster recovery site hosting”, added Dr. Al-Jandal.

In coincidence with the achievements accomplished recently, Dr. Al-Jandal has pointed out that, Al-Imam University has also taken an innovative approach to its network infrastructure while receiving an award from the national Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) for becoming the first university in Kingdom to deploy services using IPv6. It has also only the second government organisation after the CITC itself to deploy IPv6 services.

On the other IT infrastructure projects undertaken, IT Deanship Dean has said that, a major wireless network in-campus project, which, when completed, will support a wide range of services for the university, and will also be one of the largest Wi-Fi networks in the GCC, with over 7,000 indoor and outdoor access points. Additionally, the university has developed a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) which means that students can access their own personalised virtual desktop from any device they choose, be it laptop, tablet or mobile, and just have to download a certificate to the device for authentication.  

Concluding his words, Dr. Al-Jandal has revealed that, his administration is also working with the wider education community and government to develop new services and solutions. The university has a program sponsored by the Saudi e-Government authority “Yesser” to develop e-services, that’s why we are focusing more on e-services, how to improve e-services and to stop working with paper,  this is one of the main goals we have for our service department.