by Sean O'Brien, Internet2 and Keith Fowlkes, Vice President, E&I Technology

We’re excited to have announced earlier today that E&I Cooperative Services (E&I) and Internet2 are collaborating on a pilot project to bring together E&I’s public procurement expertise and Internet2’s cloud expertise, as developed through the NET+ program.

A request for proposal (RFP) for cloud-hosted telecommunications and web conferencing services will be released as part of this pilot shortly. A committee consisting of mutual members of E&I and Internet2, along with staff from both organizations, are completing work on the RFP at this time. This blog post is intended to answer some initial questions and provide additional context for our members about the pilot project. We’re looking forward to the opportunities presented by this collaboration and are eager to hear feedback, comments, questions, and ideas from our members.

If you have additional questions on the pilot, please reach out to both of us at kfowlkes@eandi.org and sobrien@internet2.edu. If you have questions about the RFP process, please reach out to Cathy Goglia, Contracts Manager, Technology, at cgoglia@eandi.org. 

Why Resellers are the Answer for Technology Procurement

As a veteran technology leader in higher education, I could not begin to count the hours that I have spent either on the phone or in person with hardware and software suppliers negotiating (occasionally begging) for better prices for hardware and software. Every higher educational institution that I have served over the past 26 years has had some initiative to cut costs and improve efficiency. Over the past 5 years though, it has been much like trying to squeeze blood from a turnip, trying different approaches to providing services. Over the past 3 years in our work building a consortium of private colleges and universities (the Higher Education Systems and Services Consortium- HESS) and now leading the technology contracts category for E&I Cooperative Services, I have realized that it is not always WHAT we are buying but HOW higher educational technology organizations are buying that is the core challenge.