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CIO Update for the Week of July 27

Vacations continue to riddle staffing across the System. If you are reading this email today, then you are one of the lucky few who aren’t on vacation! In looking at the calendar for the week of July 27th, the following items of general interest are worth commenting on:

News

New

  • Revisions to System Regulation 29.01.03, Information Security, were approved by the Chancellor, effective July 10, 2015. Outlined below are some of the reasons prompting this latest revision.

    • The latest revision to Texas Administrative Code (TAC) 202 was recently completed and adopted at the state level. This updated regulation is reflective of more modern NIST controls and standards.
    • With the increasing focus on information security and its quickly changing landscape, a single focal point is needed to drive the authority of cybersecurity efforts and provide a vehicle to allow the system to drive guidelines regarding cybersecurity in line with TAC 202. This revised regulation establishes authority and sets up the overall structure. The Information Security Standards document provides detailed standards to the members for information security policies and practices.
    • When a change to cybersecurity practices is needed, the Standards document will allow the System Chief Information Security Officer to push the updates to the members much more quickly than updating and publishing a revised regulation.

     

  • EMC is hosting the EMC Big Data Vision Workshop with Bill Schmarzo. Here are the details:

    Venue: Hilton College Station; 801 University Drive East, College Station, TX 77840
    Date: August 13, 2015

    Agenda:

    • 11:15 am – Check In
    • 11:30 am – Buffet Lunch
    • 12:00 pm – Session Start
    • 1:30 pm – Break
    • 2:00 pm – Breakout Sessions (XtremIO and Isilon)

     

    Please note that you do not have to attend the entire session (i.e., breakout sessions after). EMC has limited seating so please register at: Registration Link.

In Process

  • All Universities should be prepared  to participate in the EDUCAUSE Core Data project. Our participation enables TAMUS Universities to maintain an IHE waiver from providing data required of other State agencies.

  • The 2016 Texas A&M University System Technology Summit is February 16-18, 2016. The planning team wants YOUR input. If you want to hear about something specific or from someone specific, please submit or vote on ideas at TechSummit Reddit. If you don’t use Reddit, simply email your ideas to techsummit@tamu.edu.

System-Wide Contracting News

New

  • Deloitte has been selected as the finalist for award of the A&M System IT Governance RFP. The next step will be to start discussions regarding the contract.

  • The RFP for Mobile Application Services has been posted at Mobile Apps RFP.

In Process

  • The RFI responses for the Maestro RFI will continued to be reviewed this week.

  • TAMUS is finalizing the amendment to engage SolutionsPlus to provide RFP evaluation assistance for the Banner Services RFP.

  • Adobe has provided the following revised ETLA pricing. You will note that the pricing requires that 50% of TAMU FTE’s need to be a party to the contract. Please pass this along to the appropriate people at your institution. I would be interested in what the level of interest is from each Member.

  • Texas A&M IT has begun a project to implement Infoblox for DNS, DHCP and IP address management for the TAMU network. The vendor has agreed to extend the discounts TAMU receives as a result of its large volume purchase to all System members. Details of this pricing will be shared when the agreement is finalized. Additionally, Infoblox is an extensible enterprise solution that offers options that could facilitate a System wide collaborative implementation using a grid deployment strategy (Infoblox). An online presentation via Webex will be scheduled to allow the vendor to give an overview of the solution. Contact Scott Honea if you are interested in the Infoblox project.

Repeats

  • Siteimprove checks web pages, every five days, for spelling, grammar, broken links, and accessibility. The cost is 54 cents per web page per year. Any Members interested in adding this service need to contact me directly.

  • The System-wide agreement with Cisco WebEx allows Members to purchase licenses for their entire faculty/administrators at the low cost of $1.44/month/license.

  • Syncplicity licensing is available for all Members.

Projects

New

  • Six firms responded to the RFP for a System Integrator for the upcoming implementation of Workday Human Capital Management. The evaluation team will be narrowing down the respondents to a short list in the next ten days.

In Process

  • TAMU opened negotiations with a second component #1 vendor (data center build out). The evaluation of the second component (compute and storage) and third components (IT services) are in process.

  • Utilities & Energy Services is working with Engineering to serve as the pilot of Cisco EnergyWise.

SCIO Trips/Visits

  • Minnesota (July 27th)
  • Central Texas (July 29th)