The majority of modern business processes are IT or softwarebased. Different software systems are often used for this purpose, thus forming a heterogeneous IT landscape. The automation of business processes therefore requires the integration of these systems and applications.

At KIT, this system integration is a particularly important strategic goal. It requires cooperative solution approaches of all parties involved in the business processes. The SCC, as Information Technology Center of KIT, especially the Applications, Middleware, and IT Architecture (AMA) Department, designs such integrated IT solutions and services and operates them in a future-proof manner.

Particularly with regard to the variety of service providers and consumers existing at KIT, IT components and solutions that provide a KIT solution through interaction play an important role. The facets of integration considered in AMA include people, portals, processes, and providers of different technologies and procedures.

The "Campus and Cloud Application" (CCA) department operates, develops, and maintains central, scalable software systems, providing them as services for students, staff, and partners at the state and consortium level (Baden-Württemberg, Helmholtz Association, DFN). In addition, CCA operates various clustered database management systems for KIT.

To meet the requirements of modern university IT, the department ensures highly available operation, continuous development, integration, data security, and user support for these systems. The department works closely with the KIT faculties and external partners.

Services managed by CCA include the campus management systems CAS Campus and HISinOne, the learning and examination platform ILIAS, the federal state service bwSync&Share, the software development platform GitLab, the KIT and DFN mailing list system, and other platforms that support teaching, research, and administration. In addition, CCA provides the KI.Toolbox as a platform for the use of AI (artificial intelligence).

Employees and students at KIT expect a functioning and secure IT working environment as well as transparent and orderly service processes for operation and support of applications and systems. CSM supports the provision of secure and reliable IT services with IT security and service management. Together with the operations teams, the CSM department continuously supports and improves the IT services of the entire SCC, among other things, by using "ITIL Service Management Best Practices". In this context, the SCC's service desk is the central point of contact and coordination for requests related to these services.

By means of a process-oriented client management system, CSM centrally manages the ed-user devices for administrative organizational units of KIT; for institutes, CSM provides further operating models.

Together with our partners in the organizational units, we design these IT processes in a cooperative way. The goal is to align the quality of IT services with the needs of the users and the available resources.

The department Data Analytics, Access and Applications (D3A) deals with challenges that must be solved for the efficient use of data-intensive applications.

The research and development activities of the department cover several topics:

• Federated access methods and policies (authentication, authorization) for access to distributed storage and computing services
• Development and practical use of scalable tools for data analytics and machine learning
• Joint research and development with domain scientists, especially climate and environmental scientists in the field of data-intensive applications.
• Contributions to the development of the European Open Science Cloud and the integration of communities within the framework of several EU projects

In the Data Exploitation Methods (DEM) department we are conducting research in the Helmholtz Engineering Digital Futures programme, and develop software for the topics

• metadata for research data
• efficient research data management
• data analysis

within the application fields and areas

• Materials science
• Digital humanities
• National Research Data Infrastructure
• Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration Platform

DEM offers doctorates, student theses and HiWi positions for many exciting research topics (see jobs and theses at DEM).

The SCC's internal and external business processes are handled by department Finance and Administration (FuA), headed by Sabine Düsenberg, through the three pillars of financial management, personnel administration and order processing. The department's tasks include procurement and invoice processing, budget planning and financial management, personnel administration and occupational safety measures. The department therefore has far-reaching cross-sectional functions.

The financial management tasks include, in particular, budget and project controlling of SCC’s large-scale research and university tasks as well as the National Supercomputing Center NHR, the control of personnel deployment planning and the recording of personnel days as well as financial report management.

The Personnel Administration team supports SCC employees and research assistants in all personnel processes such as new hires, contract extensions and changes, advises employees and managers on personnel management issues, manages the personnel budget and is involved in internal KIT projects.

The order processing team initiates all SCC procurement processes, tracks incoming goods and implements invoice processing, in addition to the associated inventory and deinventory processes. Complex administration tasks as part of integrated financial planning are tracked, as is the documentation of thousands of bookings every year, which links them closely with financial and NHR controlling as well as personnel administration. The team is also responsible for the external and internal billing of SCC services. The team will also process the applications for business travel expenses financed by the university tasks, until the changeover to the TMSK’s digital process has been completed comprehensively. 

As part of the extended administrative tasks, the department also ensures occupational safety by organizing annual occupational safety briefings and supports first responders, fire protection and evacuation assistants in their service for the organizational unit.
 

The SCC-IOR department operates the KIT's SAP system landscape. In addition to basic technical administration, SCC-IOR is also responsible for application support, i.e. troubleshooting and implementing new requirements through customizing or in-house developments in the systems. SCC-IOR is also responsible for user and role administration for the SAP systems.

The SAP system landscape at KIT comprises SAP ERP with the modules for accounting (FI/CO/PSM), logistics (MM/SD), human resources (HCM) and the infrastructure in the broader sense (PM/PP/PS), the user portal (UP) and SAP BW for comprehensive reporting. Furthermore, add-ons are operated to support various administrative processes (e.g. for digital invoice processing) as well as interfaces to non-SAP systems.

SCC-IOR works closely with the service units responsible for the SAP modules (e.g. FIMA, EVM, PSE, FM).

CIS provides a secure and well-monitored groupware environment based on Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint. While Exchange, in addition to providing email services, focusses on mobile communication and calendar applications, SharePoint enables KIT institutions to use web-based team portals for the exchange of all kinds of information.

In consultation with the IT officers of KIT institutions, CIS also provides basic Windows applications. For this modern methods of operating system and software deployment, such as Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) and Microsoft AppV, are utilised.

Using these techniques, the SCC computing pools are prepared for the operation of courses. The software is provided in consultation with the instructors.

Access to the network is one of the main prerequisites for admission to information and communication today. A stable, functional and convenient network infrastructure is the basis for effective work of scientists, staff, students and external and internal users. The department NET headed by Klara Mall supplies the entire KIT with IP connectivity, runs the entire network infrastructure with active components such as routers and switches and the passive components like copper and fiber cabling. Beside the wired network NET is providing the wireless network of KIT and offers users a high degree of mobility. For access from the Internet or from home via DSL appropriate remote access solutions are offered. In addition, many network-related services such as DNS, NTP, DHCP, RADIUS, etc. are offered. Another focus of the department are telecommunication services. NET provides a multi-casting and streaming capable network infrastructure, established integrated value-added services for the future integration of voice and data services by establishing class of service in the network. This allows for application dependent classification of traffic as background, best effort, video, voice and prioritized management. The round-the-clock operation of the department will provide 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the technical readiness and redundancy.

The Scientific Computing and Mathematics department links the activities of the Simulation and Data Life Cycle Labs (SDLs), the HPC consulting project bwRSE4HPC, the research group Computational Science and Mathematical Methods (CSMM), as well as the HPC outreach projects Simulated Worlds and CAMMP.