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Internet2, the higher education technology consortium, on Tuesday announced new master agreements with 16 companies in what the consortium is calling a major step toward eliminating the “transaction costs” that have made campus-based technology deployments unduly expensive for universities and vendors alike. Instead of negotiating individual contracts, Internet2’s 221 member colleges essentially will be able to opt in to a licensing agreement the consortium negotiated with more than a dozen providers of cloud computing services, including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Desire2Learn.
The agreements are part of Internet2’s Net+ Services project, which it unveiled last year. The goal of the project is to work with technology companies to tailor versions of their cloud-computing services to match the needs of colleges and universities, then enable institutions to buy licenses for those services through Internet2, rather than negotiating with companies on an individual basis -- a tedious, redundant exercise that was driving up the cost of doing business for everyone involved, says Shelton Waggener, the CIO of the University of California at Berkeley.
Internet2’s negotiations on behalf of its members do not merely constitute a group discount deal, but a “new operating paradigm for delivering services to higher education,” says Waggener. Campus technology budget makers “cannot trim [their] way to success,” he says. “It’s about creating models that allow us to keep the dollars in the classroom and the labs and not spend them on lawyers for contracts or shipping costs or wasted capacity.”
