Consolidation of Technology Tools Across Campus
- Karen Park
The SPU Information Technology (IT) department, as part of the SPU 135 Technology Workstream process, spent fall quarter partnering with different departments researching, gathering contracts, and learning about different use cases of technologies used across campus. The main objective of this investigation is to find ways to reduce the overall cost of owning, leasing, operating and maintaining technology at SPU. To that end, the Technology Workstream team has been working with many of you to identify technologies currently utilized across campus, and whenever possible consolidate, deprecate, or replace technology-related services.
After reviewing contracts and researching costs to the institution, the following technologies have been identified as duplicates of existing services and will be discontinued at the end of this fiscal year, June 30th, 2025. In addition to these changes and conversations, some additional technologies may have been deprecated because they are no longer used. If IT has been involved in the administration, these technologies will also be listed below.
As more details become available, we will add technologies to this list. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to help@spu.edu.
Technology Name | Technology Purpose | Recommended Alternatives | Primary Groups Impacted |
|---|---|---|---|
Zoom | Online Meetings, Webinars and Recordings | Faculty, Staff, and Students | |
Formstack | Web Forms | Microsoft Forms | University Communications, Staff & Specific Departments |
Poll Everywhere | Active/Live Polling and Feedback | Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Teams Polling | Faculty & Some Staff |
LabStats | Academic Machine Reporting and Remote Computer Access | Limiting Licenses to support Remote Lab only & make plans to move to Virtual Machines | IT, Some Faculty & Staff, and students |
PRTG Support & Maintenance | Notifications when IT Managed devices are offline | Move to an unsupported license and research replacement tools this next fiscal year. | IT |
Scantron Support | Scoring and Analyzing Exam Responses | Support contract expires and machine has low use, will look into alternative technologies this next year. | Some Faculty |
Minitab | Software used for teaching | No longer needed | Faculty |
Tableau | Visualizing and Reporting on Data | Software contract was already discontinued, and users have been encouraged to move to other tools, like Power BI. | Faculty & Staff |