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CIO Update for the Week of Sept 7

The first weekend of college football is behind us. Texas A&M and Texas A&M Commerce should be both be ranked in the Top 25 after a great start to their seasons. In looking at the calendar for the week of September 7th, the following items of general interest are worth commenting on:

News

New

  • The Kyle Field Executive Re-Development Committee meets on Tuesday.

  • The Human Capital Management System (Project Helios) Monthly Sponsor Meeting meets on Tuesday.

  • The Texas A&M Information Technology Advisory Committee meets on Thursday.

  • The 12th Man Foundation hosts a Gala Event at Kyle Field on September 11th.

  • Texas A&M hosts its first home game in the newly re-modeled Kyle Field on September 12th.

  • The System Office, in conjunction with the Trans Texas Videoconference Network, has chosen to not re-certify System Regulation 29.01.05 (Trans Texas Videoconference Network). The decision was made to change the governance model going forward. Any TTVN-related regulation will be determined by the working committee being formed under the leadership of Scott Honea.

In Process

  • Citrix is looking for universities to work with them on a new offering – Campus Connect. The product, when fully implemented, is intended to give your student population a best in class mobile experience all from a single branded (open source/ customizable) app. This app is intended to provide them with a better way to connect with their professors, find safe places to study on campus, navigate their way to sports games, and more. If you are interested in speaking with them and/or working with them as a pilot institution, contact me directly. Here are a video and a website for more information:

System-Wide Contracting News

New

  • The committee evaluating the RFP for Mobile Application Services has eliminated two other responses for non-compliance. They are continuing to evaluate the remaining seven responses this week.

In Process

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

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

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

  • Deloitte has been selected as the Project Helios system integrator. Contract negotiations have begun.

  • The Project Helios IV&V (Independent Verification & Validation) RFP is under development. It will be issued in the next two weeks.

  • The Project Helios team is interviewing candidates for various project team roles. Open positions can be found at Project Helios Job Openings

  • Stay tuned for a new Project Helios website and logo.

In Process

  • Dollar Data Center – Texas A&M IT is working on developing two documents needed to nail down a contract 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.

SCIO Trips/Visits

  • No trips/visits are scheduled for this week.