Software Funding & Acquisition Guidelines

Purpose

This document describes the guidelines for new software acquisitions and allocation of existing software resources.

Funding Source

Annual software maintenance costs are funded by state-allocated funds. The software maintenance budget is divided into system software (operating systems, compilers, backup software), utilities (WinaXe, Ghostview, Acrobat), non-engineering-specific software including productivity tools (Visual Basic, Microsoft Office, Java), and commercial educational software (Pro/E, Matlab, CHEMCAD).

Software capital purchases are funded and will continue to be funded by student fees.

Guidelines

All software purchase decisions reside with academic departments. Commercial educational software funds are allocated each year to College of Engineering departments based on departmental “ownership” of existing software. Ownership is determined by each department and means the software is part of the curriculum. CSS facilitates the license negotiation and will install, maintain, and support purchased software.

Software is funded by a cost-share model. CSS provides 100% of purchase costs for new commercial, educational software and contributes 25% to annual maintenance renewal costs. The department share for new software purchases is 75% of the annual maintenance cost. If annual maintenance is rolled into the purchase price, the department share would be subtracted from the purchase price for the first year. For example, if a package cost $10,000 and the annual maintenance renewal is 10% of the purchase price, CSS would pay $9,250 and the department share would be $750 for the first year. In the second year, CSS would pay $250 and the department share would be $750.

The department share can be paid by a single department or multiple departments. If several departments want the same package on the system, they can share the cost; if only one department wants a particular package on the system, they bear the entire departmental cost.

Research Use

The cost-share model applies to the educational portion of any license agreement. When there is a differential cost between an educational version and research version of a software package, the CSS and departmental contributions will be calculated based on the cost of the educational version. Departments and researchers interested in the research version must cover the purchase and annual cost differential.

Commercial Educational Software Acquisition Policy

In order to maintain a secure and productive computer environment, software must meet the following guidelines to qualify for a network install and cost sharing.

1. Annual maintenance must be purchased for all commercial software. Annual maintenance must include phone support.
2. Software must be able to run as an ordinary user (i.e., not as a Power user or Administrator).
3. Software must support network licensing and must be able to be run from any machine on the College network.
4. Enough licenses must be purchased to adequately support the class (or classes)
in which the software will be used. The College recommends purchasing a number equal to at least 20%-25% of the maximum number of students in the class (or classes) or a number equal to the number of seats in the 1245 SC electronic classroom (33).
5. The department(s) funding the software is responsible for any reporting requirements (e.g., Ansys requires an annual usage report).

If a purchased package does not meet these guidelines, CSS will not install it on the network. However, the software may be installed on an individual faculty machine or in a research lab.

Annual Software Maintenance Renewal Timeline

Software maintenance renewal processing coincides with budget planning for the new fiscal year. CSS will send software renewal notices to each department in early March. The notices will include a report of projected department and college software expenditures for the new fiscal year. DEOs must respond to the notices by June 1 indicating whether to proceed with the renewal or to drop the software for the new fiscal year. Communication is critical since departments may be sharing the cost of a particular package. To facilitate communication, CSS will make renewal and removal responses available online for departments to review. Should one or more departments decide to drop their support for a multi-department funded package, CSS will also notify the remaining departments.

Departments will be billed in July. After a maintenance contract renewal is executed, no refunds can be made.

Guidelines for Installation Requests

These guidelines apply to purchased software and donated or free software.

In general, the sooner CSS receives the software, the more likely it is that the install will be completed prior to the start of the next semester. Requests will be processed in the order they are received. Queue order may change if the requesters agree to the change.

Guidelines for Software Removal

The College recommends a one-year notification period prior to removing software from the system. This notification time period allows CSS and the supporting departments to communicate the status of the software through a variety of mechanisms (e.g., newsletter, application wrapper, faculty meetings).

Annual software maintenance shares must continue to be funded by the departments during the notification period.

Software that remains on the removal list following the one-year notification period will be removed from lab, classroom, and other public workstations prior to the start of fall classes. In addition, the College cannot maintain retired software that remains on individual faculty or research machines. It is especially likely that new OS loads will render retired software inoperable.

Timeline

Compatibility guidelines: Software must be compatible with the supported engineering lab load in order to be installed on the college network. Windows software installations require a minimum of 2-4 weeks from request date to deploy date providing the software meets the compatibility guidelines.

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