Educational institutions across California will be able to access the state government's technology services portfolio under a newly formed partnership.
Specifically, the state is linking the California Government Enterprise Network (CGEN) to the high-capacity California Research and Education Network (CalREN) operated by the nonprofit CENIC organization. CGEN provide the California state government with wide-area network connectivity. CENIC connects K-12 schools, public libraries and many of California's biggest universities.
Adelina Zendejas, deputy director of the state's Broadband and Digital Literacy Office, initially made the announcement at CENIC's annual conference last month.
"This is a truly big win," Zendejas said, adding that the partnership with the state is formed around CENIC and the city of Sacramento. A memorandum of understanding is being developed, Zendejas said.
The arrangement will allow institutions across the state to share service services across a common network instead of remaining in silos, said Chris Cruz, chief deputy director of operations for the California Department of Technology.
"And this is something that hasn't been done before that's really significant to bring all of us to an enterprise standard in the state. We see this as a value because, once again, volume-based pricing is very important in the state; as we bring more customers into our CGEN network and CENIC we can draw pricing and distribute that across our customer base," Cruz said in a TV interview last week.
CENIC is involved in various innovation-focused initiatives. Last summer the city and county of San Francisco announced that they have collaborated to provide direct connection at 10 gigabits per second at the main San Francisco Public Library to CENIC’s California Research and Education Network.
CGEN is built on vendor products offered through CALNET master contracts.
