Thursday, November 30, 2000
9:00 am

The UNC Shared Services Alliance Advisory Board met in the General Administration Building, Chapel Hill, on Thursday, November 30, 2000 at 9:00 a.m. Jeff Williams, the Chairman, called the meeting to order.

The following were in attendance.

The meeting opened with an update and discussion on the combined meeting of the Alliance and TLT Boards.

• A motion was made by WSSU that the TLT Executive Director be invited to participate in the Alliance Board meetings. Seconded by WUC. Motion passed.

This will be taken back to the TLT Board to see if they think it should be the Executive Director or the Chair of TLT Board.

Strategic Online Learning Infrastructure Development (SOLID), an initiative of the TLT, will hold videoconferences on February 2, 9, 16, 23 and March 9, 16, 23 and 30. All days are Fridays from 1:00-3:00pm. SOLID's purpose is to identify best practices regarding learning management systems and identify key features of those systems. These videoconferences will be a time for vendors to present information relative to their products. The vendors have been asked to have technical people at the videoconferences so it is not just a sales pitch.

It was recommended that each campus put together a best practices document for how they get the information disseminated on campus. Part of the TLT portal is geared to facilitate communication and the TLT extended an invitation to the Alliance Board to make use of these resources. It was suggested that everyone go to unctlt.org and take a look. Put in you own ID.

Other areas discussed were IT, the commonality of infrastructure and portals; Directory services; and central support facilities for hardware and software and staffing commonality.

It was determined that both organizations play a key role with what's going on with e-learning and to tighten that relationship. The specific piece was the course management systems, the Blackboards, the WEB CTs, and their integration with the overall student information system environment.

Discussion centered on SCT and the lack of responsiveness to our needs, i.e. the contract. A deadline of December 1 was issued to SCT to have the signed contract back to GA. A motion was passed for the Interim VP for Information Resources to discuss this with SCT and provide them with a chronological list of events.

• A motion was made by ECSU to procure the Enterprise Payment Gateway Solution from Touchnet at a cost to the Alliance of $235,734. Seconded by UNCP. Motion passed.

The Touchnet quote had pricing for UNCC and UNCG that these schools will incur.

Fred shared the SCT Banner Alumni quote. The price reflected a 40% discount. The quote reflected license fees and maintenance costs but did not include Oracle. Other areas discussed were hardware issues, database support and Plus to Banner interface.

It was suggested to give the group the opportunity to write our own counter proposal, i.e. a Web enabled bandage. Discussion of ADS solutions followed. Can there be a custom development on top of ADS Web for Alumni? GUI interface on top of Plus might help staff for short term. Build something that can be centrally maintained. What would it cost to have Banner in one location for multiple campuses? Third party products could be implemented in multiple campus environments with custom interface, i.e. RazorsEdge, CONNEX, IBI. There may be another alternative. The Interim VP for Information Resources will investigate and let the group know.

Lisa suggested tabling this matter until the Board gets the RFI back.

Based on SCT Plus, at least one campus does not feel that it is a good idea to invest in Plus. We need to see what the RFIs will contain.
A configuration for a SUN server-- SUN Enterprise 250, Dual UltraSparc 400MHz processors, 1.5GB RAM, 4 each 9GB drives, SUN Solaris 2.7-- to be used as a development/test machine for campus pipeline was presented. Discussion indicated the machine would probably cost approximately $15,000. It was agreed to pass this configuration on to Procurement so they could obtain a quote and take an electronic vote of the Board.

The next topic of discussion centered on the baseline for a firewall - solution involves hardware and software. Campuses need a firewall in front of their applications. After much discussion, it was determined there was a need to know at a baseline level what the rules are for the application firewall.

• FSU made a motion that a videoconference be arranged with the appropriate technical people from each campus to discuss the rules needed for an application firewall. Seconded by WSSU. Motion passed.

The PWC/PSP RFP is still at GA because of feedback from ITS. It has been rewritten with specific criteria to give quality outcome on current investment. Still planning on a two-week window. Need a subset of the Board as evaluators. Will clearly be January.
Subcommittee volunteers for evaluators are Jeff Williams, Joyce Williams-Green, Tom Jackson, Frank Prochaska, John Smith, and Donald Nolen.

The format and timeframe of the Request for Information was discussed. It was suggested that December is not a good time to send out anything because most businesses are having year-end closing. The RFI should focus on full enterprise-wide solutions that support learning management systems.

1. Strategic visions - enterprise-wide systems in higher education
2. Current solutions vs. future plans (two years out)
3. Platform/technical architecture
4. Price methodology structure (platform size, FTE)
5. Price distribution % (License, Installation, Hardware, Software)
6. Standard industry discounts
7. Must respond to qualify for RFP
8. $5M
9. Experience in HE - list of references (Length of business)
10. Migration experience
11. Scalability of the product
12. Support requirements

Make request on how the information is presented back to us. Have approximately ten fairly succinct questions and ask vendors to provide other information they feel would be relevant.

Two questionnaires were passed out and feedback was requested. These were developed as a first attempt to get campus feedback about what the Alliance has provided thus far and what the campuses view as being needed from the Alliance. Both questionnaires will be revised based on feedback received.

The baseline services spreadsheet was redistributed.

Next meeting dates for Alliance Advisory Board (all at GA):
January 26, 2001
February 28 (afternoon with TLT Board)
March 1
March 30
April 27
May 25
June 29

Need to get video dates for Advisory meetings.

Meeting adjourned.