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CIO Update for the Week of Apr 18

I hope that you had a glorious Easter weekend with your friends and family.

For the week of April 18, the following items of general interest are worth commenting on.

News

New

  • IT Governance

    • The Information Security Council meets Tuesday at 10:00 a.m.

     

  • Vendor Updates

    • The System Offices met with UiPath last week and I sent a slide presenting possible higher education use cases
      • UiPath is interested in engaging groups across the system on robotic process automation (RPA), provide a deep dive into higher education use cases and customer case studies, and explain best practices / KPIs for scaling RPA across enterprise
      • If I set up a webinar in the next couple of weeks, who at your institution or agency is interested in attending?

     

     

Repeats

  • Vendor Updates

    • The System Offices met with Softdocs; an overview was sent through email; contact Mark Stone for more information

    Softdocs is the only higher education-focused provider of process automation and content management solutions that empower universities to modernize campus operations and drive institutional success. As Ellucian’s Partner of the Year and one of the first Ethos integration partners, our platform seamlessly integrates with Banner, Colleague, and other core systems across campus to provide secure and compliant forms, workflows and eSignatures – all with a secure content repository to build a connected campus and quickly do more with less.   

    Softdocs currently helps hundreds of universities, schools, and agencies across the country with enterprise document management and unlimited mobile responsive forms and workflows to simplify the most complex business processes including dual-enrollment registration, financial aid, HR, finance, registrar, enrollment management and more. 

    If you or someone on your team is interested in learning more, please reach out to Softdocs via Chad Shrout at cshrout@softdocs.com.

  • LEARN has authorized a call for NOC-as-a-Service pilot participants

    LEARN Board of Directors and TAG Members,

    As discussed in this week’s First Quarter Board Meeting, the Operation and Services Committee recently approved the pilot for NOC as a Service – Edge Monitoring. This new pilot will provide Members with 24x7x365 monitoring and support, therefore alleviating after hours strain on technical staff. The LEARN NOC will monitor border devices already connected to the LEARN backbone. Additionally, pilot participants will be given access to the NOC portal to view their border devices’ interface utilization and status.

    In order to participate in this pilot, a member must be connected to the LEARN network, currently contracted for LEARN’s Commodity Internet Service, and allow PING and SNMP protocols to LEARN monitoring servers.

    If you are interested in participating in this pilot, please complete the form found here.

    If you have questions, please contact Todd Horkman.

System-Wide Contracting News

In Process

  • A&M System-wide Contracts Under Development:

    • eSignature (airSlate / SignNow, NextGen)
    • Oracle perpetual campus license
    • Virtual conference software (Aventri)

     

Repeats

  • Current A&M System-wide Contracts:

    • 3 Play Media provides closed captioning services (discretionary)
    • Acadeum provides access to an online education marketplace that offers courses across a network of colleges and universities to help students stay on track and graduate faster (discretionary)
    • Accelevents supports virtual and hybrid conferences (discretionary)
    • AdmitHub fosters student success with artificial intelligence-powered mobile messaging and chatbots (discretionary)
    • Adobe provides full Creative Cloud suite and Adobe Pro software tools (discretionary)
    • Adobe Sign provides electronic signature and related workflow capabilities (discretionary)
    • airSlate / SignNow provides electronic signature and related workflow capabilities (discretionary)
    • AT&T provides network as a service and related services (discretionary)
    • Automatic Sync provides closed captioning services (discretionary)
    • Aventri supports virtual and hybrid conferences (discretionary)
    • Banner COE (CAG) provides Banner-related services (discretionary)
    • Blackboard provides a cloud-based learning management system (discretionary)
    • Campus Sonar provides specialized social listening services for higher education (discretionary)
    • campusM (Ex Libris) supports mobile application development (discretionary)
    • Canvas (Instructure) provides a cloud-based learning management system (discretionary)
    • Cisco Strategic Relationship supports the AT&T NaaS RELLIS services and includes discounted Cisco products and services (discretionary)
    • Class Climate (Scantron) allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
    • D2L provides a cloud-based learning management system (discretionary)
    • Diligent provides board portal functionality (discretionary)
    • DocuSign provides electronic signature and related workflow capabilities (discretionary)
    • Duo (Cisco) provides two-factor authentication (discretionary)
    • Examity provides on-line proctoring services (discretionary)
    • eXplorance allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
    • Exterro unifies e-discovery, privacy and digital forensics activities to help organizations manage and mitigate regulatory, compliance and litigation risks
    • Fetii provides contactless scanning technology through QR codes (discretionary)
    • GoReact provides a platform for feedback, grading and critiquing of video assignments (discretionary)
    • GovQA (WebQA) is the TAMUS approved Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) solution (assessed)
    • Guardian I-9 (LawLogix) provides electronic I-9 compliance verification (discretionary)
    • Hootsuite enables members to manage social networks, schedule messages and measure social media from a dashboard (discretionary)
    • Interfolio provides academic faculty management software (discretionary)
    • IOTA Solutions allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
    • Laserfiche provides document digitization and automated records processing, storage retrieval, security and archiving (discretionary)
    • LinkedIn Learning provides video courses taught by industry experts in software, creative and business skills (discretionary)
    • Microsoft provides business software and services (direct bill)
    • Modo Labs supports mobile application development (discretionary)
    • Navex provides on-line proctoring services (discretionary)
    • Oracle provides a shared hardware/software platform to host Oracle-based applications (discretionary)
    • Palo Alto provides firewalls and associated security subscription services (discretionary)
    • PlatformQ enables universities to connect with students at every stage of the recruitment process (discretionary)
    • Pluralsight offers a variety of video-based training for software developers, IT administrators and creative professionals (discretionary)
    • Portfolium (Instructure) provides students and recent graduates with the ability to connect with businesses and employers using previous academic work and projects to supplement their communication (discretionary)
    • Proctorio provides on-line proctoring services (discretionary)
    • Qualtrics provides an online survey tool that supports building and distributing surveys and analyzing the responses (discretionary)
    • Siteimprove checks web pages, every five days, for spelling, grammar, broken links, and accessibility (assessed)
    • Smart Net (Cisco) provides Cisco equipment maintenance (discretionary)
    • SmartEvals (Gap Technologies) allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
    • Sprout Social provides a social media management platform (discretionary)
    • Sterling provides background check services for employment, employment screening, drug testing, I-9 employment and education verification (discretionary)
    • TeamDynamix provides cloud-based IT service and project management software (discretionary)
    • Verbit provides closed captioning services (discretionary)
    • VMware provides various VMware software, services and training/consulting credits (discretionary)
    • WebEx (Cisco) provides online collaboration and meeting software (discretionary)

     

SCIO Trips/Visits

  • No trips scheduled this week