Good afternoon. This week (and the weeks to come) will be one of the most challenging and memorable in my lifetime. I am grateful for the professionalism, competency and integrity possessed by the CIOs across The Texas A&M University System. Thank you. I am confident that your performance will be excellent in the coming weeks. For the week of March 16, the following items of general interest are worth commenting on:
News
New
The System Offices will be staffed with only essential personnel this week; the majority of staff will be working remotely until further notice
Numerous vendors have reached out to TAMUS and have offered assistance:
- Adobe: Ming Liang (917.683.6799)
- Adobe is providing free 90-day access for Adobe Connect until July 1, 2020 with virtual rooms accommodating up to 25 participants
- Adobe is making temporary at-home access to Creative Cloud available until May 31, 2020 for universities who currently have only lab access for students, at no additional cost
- Adobe offers a Canvas integration option which surfaces the Creative Cloud (apps catalog and learning resource links) and Adobe Spark functionality within the LMS interface for an enhanced academic experience for faculty and students. We are working on similar functionality for Blackboard to be released later this year
- Adobe provides a student asset migration portal that enables graduating students to transfer the assets associated with their assigned school account to a personal account
- Find curated resources supporting distance learning on the Adobe Education Exchange to help faculty with their transition to online instruction
- AT&T: Karen Morris (km9804@att.com)
- We are continuously monitoring bandwidth usage with tools that reveal network trends, along with performance and capacity reports to help us manage our network
- We have taken several steps to help ensure the reliability of our critical business processes and supporting infrastructures in order to continue to provide high-quality communication services to you. This includes up-front prevention and mitigation efforts, as well as comprehensive emergency response and recovery plans in the event of a disaster or crisis
- We’re providing solutions that support distant and virtual learning for students, and tools to help ensure essential functions for staff can continue during an incident or emergency
- Cisco: Justin Craig (512.378.1977)
- Recently, Cisco Webex expanded its free offerings to allow employees to stay connected to their teams and continue their business operations. In response to customers asking us for guidance, today, Cisco is broadening this offer to include security for remote employees by providing extended free licenses and expanded usage counts at no extra charge for three of our key security technologies that are designed to protect remote workers anywhere, anytime and on any device
- Cisco Umbrella protects users from malicious Internet destinations whether they are on or off the network. Because it is delivered from the cloud, Umbrella makes it easy to protect users everywhere in minutes. With this offer, existing customers can exceed their user limit to support an increase in remote workers, and new customers can access a free license
- Duo Security enables organizations to verify users’ identities and establish device trust before granting access to applications. By employing a zero-trust model, it decreases the attack surface and reduces risk. With this offer, existing customers can exceed their user limit to support an increase in remote workers, and new customers can access a free license
- Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client empowers employees to work from anywhere on company laptops or personal mobile devices. It also provides the visibility and control security teams need to identify who and which devices are accessing their infrastructure. Existing AnyConnect customers can exceed their user limit to support an increase in remote workers, and new customers can access a free license. To get started, existing and new customers should talk with a Cisco representative or partner to get the requested usage counts
- These offers will be available from now until July 1, 2020. Supporting our customers and partners remains a top priority, and we hope these proactive steps help companies manage the business impact and keep employees safe during this evolving situation
- Qualtrics: Todd (361.947-0075)
- Qualtrics has released numerous public solutions to help City, County, and State entities
- Every organization needs a solution right now. Beginning this afternoon we will launch a full scale XM Solution called the Remote Work Pulse. Anyone in the world can access it. It is a real-time, live barometer to help organizations understand how their employees are doing and how to support them as huge numbers of employees are now working from home … many for the first time. We believe this will help the employees, the companies, and the global economy
- Adobe: Ming Liang (917.683.6799)
In Process
RELLIS contracts
- Contract negotiations for network services at RELLIS with AT&T/ Cisco (RELLIS NaaS) and for data center services at RELLIS with RCDRC continue
Captioning, transcription, streaming and experience management contracts
- A captioning RFP has been released: Solicitation Description: The Texas A&M University System (“A&M System”) Office of Information Technology (“IT”) has a need to acquire captioning products and services (“Captioning”) to ensure we have the best available tools and services for our faculty and students to improve their teaching and learning processes. In addition, A&M System IT wishes to insure the solution is robust enough to meet the Captioning needs of the A&M System and its members(“Member” as listed in Section 1.2) with a sustainable and economically viable process. A&M System is seeking proposals to select RESPONDENTS to provide the Captioning solution as described in Section 3.It is the intent of this RFP to establish Master Agreements with more than one qualified RESPONDENT for the requirements listed. These Master Agreements will allow each Member the discretion to adopt the Captioning solution according to its needs
System-Wide Contracting News
In Process
A&M System-wide Contracts Under Development
- Captioning Services will provide members with closed caption, transcription, and subtitling solutions to make video accessible, searchable, SEO-friendly and more engaging
- Interfolio is a self-service web database program that allows faculty (or staff) to use the Internet to maintain their teaching, research, and service records; the System Offices received a proposal for a system-wide agreement and is working with the System Procurement Office to develop a competitive bid for this product
- Qualtrics provides feedback from customers, employees and students; the System Offices is in conversations to obtain a proposal for a system-wide agreement
Repeats
Current A&M System-wide Contracts
- Access Data provides members with preservation hold software (in annual assessment)
- Adobe provides members full Creative Cloud suite and Adobe Pro software tools (discretionary)
- Banner COE provides members with Banner-related services (discretionary)
- Blackboard provides a cloud-based learning management system option to members (discretionary)
- Canvas provides a cloud-based learning management system option to members (discretionary)
- Class Climate (Scantron) provides members with tools that allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
- D2L provides a cloud-based learning management system option to members (discretionary)
- Diligent provides board portal functionality for all members (discretionary)
- DocuSign provides members with electronic signature and related workflow capabilities (discretionary)
- Duo provides two-factor authentication for all members (discretionary)
- Examity provides members with on-line proctoring services under a one-year master contract (discretionary contract)
- eXplorance provides members with tools that allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
- GovQA (WebQA) is the TAMUS approved Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) solution for all members (in annual assessment)
- Guardian I-9 (LawLogix) provides members with electronic I-9 compliance verification (discretionary).
- Hootsuite enables members to manage social networks, schedule messages and measure social media from a dashboard (discretionary)
- IOTA Solutions provides members with tools that allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
- Laserfiche provides members with the digitization of documents, the automation of records processing, storage retrieval, security and archiving (discretionary)
- Modo Labs provides mobile application development support (discretionary)
- Navex provides members with a ethics and compliance management (discretionary)
- Oracle provides members with a shared hardware/software platform to host Oracle-based applications (discretionary)
- Portfolium 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)
- ProctorU provides members with on-line proctoring services under a one-year master contract (discretionary)
- Proofpoint email filtering and data loss prevention tools (in annual assessment)
- Siteimprove checks web pages, every five days, for spelling, grammar, broken links and accessibility for 54 cents per web page per year (discretionary)
- Smart Net (Cisco) offers members equipment maintenance (discretionary)
- SmartEvals (Gap Technologies) provides members with tools that allows students to evaluate academic courses and instructors (discretionary)
- Syncplicity licensing is available for all members (in annual assessment)
- WebEx online collaboration and meeting software is available to all members at the low cost of $1.44 per month per license (discretionary)
- Zoom online collaboration and meeting software provides members with an alternative to WebEx, GoToMeeting and Adobe Connect
SCIO Trips/Visits
- No trips scheduled this week (or for the foreseeable future)