Project: Gartner Group Membership
Sponsors: Glenn Davis, Bill McTague, Bob Garcia, George Gregg, Bill Koseluk, Vince
Sefcik, Alan Moses
Summary
Membership in Gartner Group entitles the campus to a variety of Information
Technology (IT) services including: access to nationally recognized consultants,
published research material (accessible via the web), facilitated teleconferences
on a variety of IT topics and attendance at national and regional meetings
of IT luminaries.
Membership in Gartner Group allows IT planners and implementers at UCSB
to share their ideas, budgets, RFPs and plans with national experts in
the field. Gartner consultants have been useful in planning several projects
including student email, scheduling, 800 MHz radio, JAVA infrastructure
and administrative programming projects. Thus, Gartner Group supports
the academic mission of UCSB by allowing technology planners to make the
best use of campus resources and avoid costly mistakes in IT design. Additional
information is available at http://www.gartner.com.
Access to Gartner Group could be expanded to include more than seven
"seats" (people with the credentials to request services). Gartner also
offers a special higher education package that would provide a large selection
of their services to all 20,000 UCSB students. The cost for this service
would be about one dollar per registered student.
Similar services are available from Giga Group and Meta Group. Examples
of their materials have not motivated IS&C to recommend change.
Funding
Membership is currently provided using the familiar "pass-the-hat" technique.
This year the contributors are: IS&C, Student Affairs, Facilities Management,
Housing & Residential Services, Instructional Computing, Communication
Services and Letters & Science. Each of these units has one person
who can initiate requests for Gartner services. It is proposed that the
campus membership be sponsored by the new Office of Information Technology
(OIT) which would receive budgeted core funds to support the membership.
Provision of Gartner services to all students could be contemplated in
Costs
Gartner Group membership costs $19,000 per year for the seven seats
we currently have.
Matching Opportunities
None beyond passing the hat.
Staff Support Required
Some unit needs to be the prime contact (currently IS&C). This unit
distributes incoming information (Gartner Flash, Client-Care Newsletter,
etc.), determines the number of seats, pays the yearly invoice and recharges
the other contributors.
Existing Resources to Be Used
None, other than telephones, email and an occasional meeting.
Project Timeline
One year at a time.
Life Cycle of result
As long as the service is useful.
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