ShareIT expands its catalogue offerings

Alberta’s ShareIT procurement service has successfully entered its second year, marking $3.38 million in savings thus far for participating members. Now, the catalogue of end-user computing and networking hardware that can be purchased through ShareIT has expanded to include more products (under the categories of laptops, desktops, tablets, and wireless access points) from additional manufacturers.

ShareIT is an Alberta-based shared service that was formed in 2017 by 19 post-secondary institutions, and facilitated by Cybera, Alberta’s not-for-profit technology accelerator. The program leverages economies of scale to give participants access to a broader, more powerful, and more economical suite of computing technologies.

After completing two successful procurement pilots, ShareIT launched with a smaller catalogue offering of networking devices and end user computing hardware. Alberta K-12 school districts were invited to join the ShareIT program in September 2017 to purchase equipment from these offerings.

The networking devices offered under the catalogue have now been expanded to include additional Aruba wireless access points, while the end-user computing hardware now includes Acer laptops, desktops, and chromebooks, as well as Microsoft Surface products. (View the full list of ShareIT offerings here).

ShareIT has also launched a new dashboard to demonstrate the number of members who have joined the initiative, and what their savings to date have been for each catalogue offering.

“The savings that our post-secondary and K-12 school members have achieved through ShareIT in its first year surpassed what we originally projected, which is an amazing accomplishment,” says Mary Friedrich, manager of the ShareIT program. “But more than that, our members have found the biggest benefit of this service has been the time they save in sourcing new equipment, as they no longer need to spend hours working on requests for proposals and researching different equipment.”

ShareIT’s oversight committee is now reviewing options for a new catalogue of security services (including vulnerability assessment and penetration testing), and cloud provision, which they will be announcing in the coming weeks. Friedrich will also be presenting on the project and its successes so far at the upcoming Convergence Conference in Calgary on October 26 at 10:00 am.

For more information, and to find out how to join ShareIT, contact ShareIT@cybera.ca.

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