Purchasing-related - Introduction

Purchasing-related

Purchasing-related - Introduction

The CIC CIOs engage in a variety of purchasing-related activities where leveraging purchasing power or influence or sharing best practices makes sense. In some cases, these collaborations have led to millions of dollars of savings and new opportunities. A brief description of current purchasing-related activities are listed below.

  • IT Licensing Task Force:  The CIC CIOs charged an IT Licensing Task Force with responsibility for exploring and negotiating collaborative license opportunities for software products that could create cost avoidance or more favorable terms due to multi-university leverage. To date, collaborative software licenses have been negotiated for Symantec Anti-Virus and SPSS, common in data analysis. In coordination with the CIC Purchasing Consortium, an RFP process for endpoint security software resulted in a new collaborative license with Symantec in 2010.
  • IT Software Licensing Principles: In September 2008, the CIC CIOs developed a set of principles to facilitate efficient licensing among software producers and consumers for higher education. As principles, these provide a philosophical basis for reaching specific contract language and sufficiency of terms.