By Michael Wegmann. UC Procurement Services is excited to announce the availability of UC wide agreements reflecting deeply discounted prices for IT infrastructure. Products in five categories– routers and switches, wireless, firewalls, servers, and storage – are now available either through resellers or the original equipment manufacturers.
With these discounts, UC can achieve a projected financial benefit of $16M per year – for up to five years! As more departments leverage these agreements for their IT infrastructure spend, the greater the total benefit to UC will be.
Whether you are in central IT or other departments, if you are interested in purchasing these products, reach out to your local IT procurement lead to take full advantage of the discounted pricing. Most of the agreements also include professional services for installation, implementation, and configuring, etc.
Advantages of the agreements
Buying through these new agreements offers you and your organization significant benefits:
- Low Cost. Purchasing organizations get excellent pricing. If they have high volume, they are also free to try to negotiate deeper discounts.
- Speed. No further competitive bidding is needed. Organizations just choose the product, buy, and install.
- Flexibility. Two or more options are provided for each product category; organizations select the product that works best in their environment.
More to come at UCCSC
I am giving a presentation about the agreements at this year’s UC Computing Services Conference (UCCSC), August 14 at 1:00 p.m. at UC Davis. If you’re attending the UCCSC, be sure to attend this session!
Accessing the agreements
The chart below lists the specific products offered, and whether they are sold by the manufacturer or a reseller. For information about accessing the agreements, contact your local IT procurement lead or Michael Wegmann at UCOP.
In addition, all agreements are posted in CalUSource, the new UC-wide procurement portal for both the University of California and California State University systems. Single sign-on access to CalUSource is in the process of being created for all individuals with UC accounts.
We will also be following up over the course of the year to provide further details about each of the agreements, information about coordinated IT buying, and other updates. Stay tuned!
| Product Category | Product / Manufacturer | Seller / Reseller |
| Routers and Switches | Cisco | ePlus |
| Juniper | Intervision | |
| Wireless | Cisco | ePlus |
| HPE | Dasher | |
| Firewall | Cisco | ePlus |
| PAN | Worldwide Technologies | |
| Fortinet | Dell | |
| Server | Cisco | ePlus |
| Dell | Dell | |
| HPE | Dasher | |
| Lenovo | Lenovo | |
| Storage | Cisco | ePlus |
| Pure Storage | World Wide Technologies | |
| Dell | Dell | |
| HPE | Dasher | |
| NetApp | NetApp |
Credit
These agreements are the result of an unprecedented level of coordination across UC locations and functions to determine needs and priorities, conduct an exhaustive RFP, and choose the highest quality products for the best prices and terms.
Shout outs go to the dedicated team of subject matter experts and procurement specialists that participated in the RFP process: Alex Carreno (UCSB), Andrew Cink (UCLAH), Bill Gee (UCLAH), Cesar Higueros (UCR), Daniel Keister (UCDH), Samer Khalil (UCOP), Jeff Khoury (UCLA), Michael Kilpatrick (UCSF), Ju Kim (UCLA), Phillip Lopo (UCSD), Tu Luu (UCSF), Saurabh Nautiyal (UCSF), Kazuto Okayasu (UCI), Tim Paul (UCR), Fred Poulsen (UCSD), Mohammad Rasool (UCDH), Mark Redican (UCD), Anthony Riles (UCD Health), Bill Storey (UCSC), Kevin Talbot (UCDH), Robert Tannenbaum (UCSF), Scott Wilzbach (UCSDIH), Dave Zavatson (UCD), Neil Kronenthal (UCOP), and Meagan Torres (UCOP/UCM).
Michael Wegmann is sr. IT commodity manager, IT Strategic Sourcing, Procurement Services, UC Office of the President.
Yesterday, the UC IT Blog featured an article about the Infrastructure RFP and agreements that we (all locations –campuses & health systems) worked together with Procurement on (Tom Trappler and team). These agreements represent an unprecedented level of coordination across the UC system, and have resulted in excellent pricing for UC. While having the agreements are great, the real value is in the opportunity to drive savings across the system. The collective IT & Procurement teams have developed a year-long communications plan to get the message out. But we need everyone’s help. Our goal should be to not just reach location central IT teams but make a concerted effort to bring the message of these agreements and the opportunity to save money for the mission to distributed IT units and research IT units as well. But we need everyone’s help – and where better to ask for that help than here on Slack where 4233 members can help us carry the message on the value of utilizing these contracts for their benefit. We could really use the active participation of this forum to share, engage and remind the total IT community of the opportunity. CIOs are all doing their part, but our community is much broader than the CIOs can logically reach. We need your help.