NET+ community volunteers make our work possible. This month, we celebrate them during National Volunteer Week (April 20-26). Whether you attended webinars, participated in service evaluations, or served on advisory boards, thank you.
In March, we recognized our procurement community volunteers during National Procurement Month. We also launched the Vendor Management Community of Practice (VM CoP) to share best practices.
NET+ community members drive improvements. The annual Higher Education Cloud Forum organizers recently released the State of the Cloud Survey. Contribute before April 25 to help shape the 2025 survey results presented at the Cloud Forum and shared with the community.
Despite significant changes this year, our commitment to uniting the R&E cloud community remains steadfast. We’re thrilled to co-host the Higher Education Summit at Knowledge25 with ServiceNow again. As one attendee noted, “Institutions face similar challenges in modernizing campus services, making community gatherings invaluable for learning and growth.”
We believe in the power of collaboration. It’s a valuable resource for managing change and anticipating its benefits.
Recently, Cloud Superhero Oren Sreebny reflected on the R&E community’s evolution: “We initially demonstrated the cloud’s value in higher ed and research. Now, we focus on using it optimally for our community. We can achieve more collectively than individually.”
In this spirit of collective progress, explore our initiatives and available resources to navigate change successfully.
AI Services Currently Under Evaluation
AI has and will continue to be a catalyst for change in various sectors, including R&E. At the end of last month, we launched service evaluations for three AI services.
- Vocareum offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to enhance AI and data science education. Internet2 members are evaluating both the Vocareum AI Notebook and AI Gateway for inclusion in the NET+ Services portfolio.
- Grammarly offers AI-powered writing assistance that ensures clear, effective, and professional communication. Internet2 members are evaluating Grammarly for Education to scale the service to an enterprise offering.
- Portkey AI Gateway was selected for a NET+ service evaluation following a community-driven request for information process to identify solutions to help manage access to AI services. Internet2 members are evaluating Portkey AI Gateway because it offers unified access to more than 250 Large Language Model (LLM) providers through a unified API.
- Anthropic also recently announced its intention to work with Internet2 and R&E institutions on a service evaluation for Claude for Education.
Several other NET+ candidate services are currently under evaluation as well. If you have questions about this effort, there’s a service you would like for us to consider adding to the portfolio, or you want to participate in NET+ Service Evaluations, please contact the NET+ team at netplus@internet2.edu.
Here are highlights of important collaborative, community activities happening – specific to the services in the NET+ Program portfolio. From accessibility and data governance to security and training, our program management team monitors change to help ensure all your bases are covered.
- NET+ AWS and NET+ GCP: You may have heard the quote, “Come for the contract and stay for the community.” What if circumstances prevent you from taking advantage of the contract, but you want to be a part of the NET+ community goodness? Cloud Infrastructure Community of Practice (CICP) was created to provide an opportunity for institutions to participate in the NET+ AWS and NET+ GCP community activities regardless of how, or even if, they contract those cloud platforms. CICP has an active calendar of engagement opportunities as well as regular unstructured gatherings to share work challenges and successes. CICP subscribing institutions also receive a growing number of benefits, including our Data Benchmarking Service and recently-announced CLASS Voucher Program.
- The NET+ Canvas Data Governance Advisory Council met in February to kick off another year of strategic discussions that continue to help map, shape, and evaluate new solutions, services, and policy surrounding data retention with Instructure. Moving into 2025, the Advisory Group’s mission has expanded to include the role of data governance in AI use, reflecting the evolving landscape of educational technology.
- NET+ Cisco: Help us provide community input into the future direction for the NET+ Duo Security, NET+ Splunk, and additional Cisco Security Cloud services by taking a short survey. Please contact Nick Lewis (nlewis@internet2.edu) if you have any questions.
- NET+ Google Workspace for Education: We recently hosted a webinar series tailored to helping you better understand the latest program offerings, strengthen your cybersecurity approach, and transform your teaching and learning strategies with cutting-edge tools. Check out the recordings from the webinars on the NET+ GWE Events Schedule.
- NET+ Panopto: We teamed up with Panopto to host a special webinar focused on the upcoming 2026 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines. This session provided critical insights into the regulatory changes and their implications for higher education and R&E institutions. If you would like to access the recording from the webinar, connect with our team at netplus@internet2.edu.
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