“When institutions adopt a service directly, they must dedicate internal staff time, develop complex legal documentation, and run costly RFPs,” said one of the MBA students who was a part of the IU research group. “NET+’s service evaluation process preempts this resource drain.”
For those institutions who subscribe to NET+ services, “our analysis confirms that this rigorous, collaborative service evaluation process replaces redundant, high cost due-diligence across dozens of universities and research institutions with a single, expert evaluation,” the student continued.
The service evaluation process saves time, reduces risk, and accelerates adoption of technology. New York University’s Stratos Efstathiadis, who participated in the recent NET+ Portkey service evaluation process, described it as “a demonstration of collaboration and efficiency… The synergy among peer institutions ensures Portkey meets the diverse AI requirements of higher education.”
Because the 20+ services that make up the NET+ portfolio were fully vetted by their peers in research and higher education (R&E), the program’s nearly 600 subscribing institutions receive benefits beyond discounted pricing. They save time and money when determining which cloud services to procure and benefit from community support during adoption. Implementing new cloud services is valuable; saving staff time in the process is priceless.
Less Leg Work, More Modernization
There never seem to be enough hours in a day. This is especially true for IT teams at R&E institutions. In addition to ensuring day-to-day operations run smoothly, they are responsible for identifying and procuring new technology services for their campuses.
How efficient is their process for procuring and deploying new technology? According to the Higher Ed Innovation Index 2025, 49% of campuses are accelerating tech investments, but 44% cite implementation as their biggest challenge. Further, when surveyed, only 14% of higher ed leaders were confident in their speed between the planning, execution, and analysis cycles necessary for adoption of emerging technology.
NET+ service evaluations, many of which take place over three months, provide the adoption accelerator that R&E institutions need to deliver the cloud services their stakeholders want more confidently and efficiently. Guided by the NET+ team, their peers do the leg work, so they don’t have to.
A participant in the service evaluation for the NET+ Miro service, Joseph Vaughan, CIO and vice president for computing and information services at Harvey Mudd College, appreciated how thorough the process was. Vaughan said, “I found the experience reassuring – the level of scrutiny, thoughtfulness, and resources (the big institutions have specialists in all sorts of areas that we can only dream of) gave me even more confidence about signing on to a NET+ agreement.”
The IU research team’s work reflects his sentiment. Through data analysis, interviews, and benchmarking, the team concluded that the NET+ program delivers efficiency by consolidating complex legal and technical vetting across peer institutions, accelerating service adoption from months to potentially days.
Source: Indiana University NET+ Service Evaluation Process Analysis
The service evaluation process not only accelerates R&E adoption of cloud services, it ensures that this community’s unique needs are met. Service evaluations function as a workforce multiplier that reduces total cost of adoption through collaborative evaluation, shared expertise, and risk reduction.
Rick Rhoades, manager, cloud services and Linux server, The Pennsylvania State University and sponsor of the NET+ Kion service, put it this way, “Internet2’s NET+ service evaluations really show the tremendous value that can be realized when we leverage the entire higher education community.”
“We [were] excited to be one of 12 institutions that participated and evaluated many key concerns from institutions today, like accessibility, security and compliance, and favorable contract terms,” Rhoades continued. “The relationships that are formed through this community-driven process lay the foundation for institutions to successfully meet their needs together, now and for years to come.”
The process reflects the NET+ commitment to solving community-identified needs with shared, scalable solutions in emerging technology areas.
Principles of the Process
The NET+ Service Evaluation Process is designed to ensure that candidate services meet the stringent technical, security, and operational requirements of Internet2 members. The Service Evaluation Process follows the established NET+ methodology to ensure thorough vetting of each service:
- Technical Assessment: Evaluation of architecture, security, and integration capabilities based on community user experiences
- Compliance: Assessment of security and accessibility through HECVAT and VPAT reviews, with commitments to relevant laws and standards like FERPA, HIPAA, and WCAG.
- Contract Negotiation: Development of higher education terms and pricing
- Launch: Comprehensive documentation for portfolio inclusion
A geographically diverse set of public and private institutions representing Internet2 higher education members and Internet2 affiliate members participate in service evaluations. This broad participation helps ensure that the solution meets the unique and varied needs of institutions across different regions and sizes, from large research universities to smaller private colleges. Services undergo a series of technical evaluations, pilot deployments, and community reviews, ensuring they are fully vetted before being made broadly available through the NET+ Program.
“Given the hidden costs and time constraints associated with solo procurement of cloud services, the NET+ Program’s collaborative service evaluation model serves as a catalyst for bringing the best services to R&E more quickly,” said Sean O’Brien, associate vice president, NET+, Internet2.
Support NET+ Service Evaluations
Every hour dedicated to NET+ service evaluations is an investment in the community’s successful adoption of emerging cloud technologies. The NET+ Program helps the community move intentionally, so R&E institutions can proceed more quickly and confidently in deploying cloud services.
To learn more about the IU team’s research or express interest in participating in NET+ service evaluations, please contact the NET+ team at netplus@internet2.edu.
About NET+
The Internet2 NET+ Program brings together the collective expertise, influence, and buying power of research and education institutions to thoughtfully accelerate cloud adoption by enabling programs and services that act as a workforce multiplier for the community we serve. Powered by a higher ed peer community, NET+ makes the cloud work better for research and education.
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