Site licensing

SCD's Database Services Group (DBS) site and volume licenses various software for UCAR as a whole and SCD. In general, licensing software for the entire organization must have benefit for SCD and represent a significant savings to the organization. Examples of this are the site licenses for educational vendor programs, such as Sun's ScholarPAC, SGI's Varsity Program, and IBM's Higher Educational Software Consortium (HESC). Administration of these licensing programs through a single contact saves UCAR over half-a-million dollars a year.

DBS also licenses the SCD-wide Synchronize calendaring software, and the Computer Production Group (CPG) administers its server. Early in the fiscal year, DBS coordinated a division-wide trial of the software for staff who wanted to try it before a final decision was made to use it on a division-wide basis. Since adopted as the division standard, Synchonize has let staff reap the rewards of increased efficiency in scheduling meetings, checking staff availability, and maintaining managers' schedules.

We are currently leading the UCAR-wide evaluation of Netscape Calendar as a possible solution for the entire organization. Because Netscape views UCAR as an educational entity, Netscape Calendar is free to the organization. It runs on most platforms common to UCAR staff, and has support for emerging technologies, such as PalmPilots.

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