Minimum Workstation and Software Site License Subcommittee Minutes

 

February 15, 2007
Meeting in AH-1120 at 10 a.m.
Diana Osborn, Chair

CATS Conference
Jim Julius announced the upcoming CATS conference in CSU Fullerton on March 26-28. Each campus has three (3) sponsored attendees. Talk to your supervisor, then notify Jim Julius if you wish to attend. Attendees must be able to share the knowledge gained at the conference with the campus members who could not attend. Please indicate in your request how you can share.

Definitions RFI, RFQ and RFP
Brian West and Jeff Fratt, from Procurement, presented information about RFI (Request for Information), RFQ (Request for Qualifications) and RFP (Request for Proposal) processes.

It was mentioned that most times the RFI process is skipped. Most used is the RFP, but many times the RFI is used when it is not known if all possible vendors for a specific product have been contacted. You must use an RFP when the cost will be $50K or more, or $250K or more on IT products.

Each campus should be purchasing at least 25% of their products from small businesses and at least 3% from disabled veteran businesses. The Department of General Services has a web page where they provide a list of certified small businesses and disabled veteran owned businesses.

One of the questions asked had to do with how to determine if something is considered IT products. Jeff provided from the official procurement documents the following definition:

Information Technology Resources (ITR) Goods and Services Contract: This classification of contracts includes acquisition of goods and/or services for all electronic technology systems and services, automated information handling, system design and analysis, conversion of data, computer programming, information storage and retrieval, telecommunications which include voice, video, and data communications, requisite system controls, simulation, electronic commerce, and all related interactions between people and machines.

When determining whether a contract is for ITR one must consider the main predominant purpose or value of the activity, and whether information technology skills and knowledge are involved as the primary purpose of the contract or whether such knowledge or skills are used to further an overarching purpose.

EndNote
The campus has EndNote Web via one of the scientific database subscriptions. The library had purchased RefWorks, which is another web based citation product aimed at undergraduates. This product expires in July. The desktop version of EndNote is more useful to faculty, graduate and post-doctoral students and has been requested as a site license possibility. The suggestion has been made that EndNote desktop could be purchased instead of RefWorks since we already have EndNote Web at no additional cost. Marilyn Hall, Library, is working on comparisons between RefWorks and EndNote Web. This topic was tabled until the next meeting since Marilyn was not available for update.

Mathematica
The Chancellor's Office has a site license for Mathematica that the campus can buy into. SDSU cost would be $9,100 per year based on $2.40 per technical student (apparently calculated on number of students in specific majors) to get unlimited licensing. The per license copy is $895. Based on this cost, if 11 faculty were purchasing the product it would be cost effective to buy in. It is not clear at this point how that buy in would be accomplished. At this point we are gathering information. Diana had sent an email contacting a list of faculty she was given by the company as interested in the product. So far she has heard back from 4 interested faculty, 2 not interested and 2 asking for clarification but no response on their interest yet. If faculty are interested in the purchase of this product they should contact Diana Osborn at diana@sciences.sdsu.edu.

HiSoftware
Several training sessions for the HiSoftware product have been arranged. Announcement of the dates, times and locations will be announced to the Web Developers list server. Subscription information is located on the SDSU Web Style Guide. Cyndi Chie is coordinating the training sessions. Currently John Ross is coordinating the license distribution for Academic Affairs. The initial trainings are 3 hours and are an overview of how the program works. If you or someone in your department coordinates web pages you should be attending one of these trainings. The training is geared towards someone who is very comfortable using computers and has a good understanding of HTML. There will be another 2 day training sometime in the future.

Vista Enterprise and compatibility issues
Procurement will be sending an advisory to those who can do Purchase Requisitions to be aware of the following: 1) new hardware should be Vista compatible, 2) there should be collaboration with their IT staff regarding the support of the operating system and software packages in their departments, 3) they should purchase XP on their computers unless otherwise approved by their department support. Celia has the Vista software but it will only be released to department IT and then only for testing and only with the approval of their department head. For colleges within Academic Affairs this would be the Assistant or Associate Dean. The copies that will be available will be the MAC authorization version. The method of authorization keying for the campus will be brought up at the next IT Managers meeting.

Calendar Committee/Email Committee
The Calendar Committee met with Procurement and started the RFP process. There are currently still openings on the committee if you are interested. Please contact Bob Newhouse at newhouse@mail.sdsu.edu to volunteer for the committee. The hope is to have the RFP ready by March.

Deep Freeze
John Ross has taken the presentation from the IT Managers Committee back to Academic Affairs for potential funding. We are currently waiting for their response.

Next MWSSLS meeting will be on March 15, 2007 at 10 a.m. in AH-1120.

PLEASE NOTE: The statements found on the MWSSLS Home Page are for informational purposes only. While every effort is made to ensure that this information is up to date and accurate, official information can be found in the University publications.

Last modified on March 14, 2007
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