By
Sean O’Brien - Associate Vice President, NET+, Internet2
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Internet2 NET+ and Other Cloud Program Updates
Cultivating Community and Collaboration: Research, Resources, and Reassurance
Sixty-four percent of gardeners surveyed in the U.S. plan to expand their gardens this year. As the second quarter of 2026 gets under way, the concept of growing a garden resonates with the NET+ team. We’ve been planting seeds of innovation, efficiency, and cooperation that are now coming to fruition as new services and resources for the research and higher education (R&E) cloud community. As these services and resources are incorporated into the NET+ Program, it’s gratifying to see the work we’ve done alongside community members result in sustenance for building a better cloud for R&E.
Reaping Rewards
Much like planning a garden, each service in the NET+ portfolio is carefully selected to complement the others and directly addresses needs expressed by the community. This was the case with the recently announced launch of the NET+ UpGuard Service for scaling third-party risk management (TPRM). Recognizing how challenging it is for higher ed institutions to manage all their third-party vendors, the R&E community asked NET+ to identify tools institutions can use to scale their TPRM programs. Eight institutions representative of your peers did just that. Learn more about their efforts and the benefits of NET+ UpGuard by joining us for the launch webinar on May 13 at 12 p.m. ET.
Like all our services, NET+ Upguard was selected through a community-driven evaluation process. The NET+ Service Evaluation Process ensures that cloud solutions align with R&E priorities, saving institutions time and resources. According to an in-depth analysis conducted by a group of graduate students at Indiana University last year, an average of 500 staff hours per institution was saved from NET+ community-led cloud services evaluations.Through data analysis, interviews, and benchmarking, the group 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.
We’re proud of the role the NET+ Program plays in providing fertile ground for institutions to share ideas and solve problems more quickly. As a case in point, for years, institutions running multi-account AWS environments faced a frustrating challenge: Transit Gateway costs couldn’t be allocated to the accounts that actually generated the traffic. Internet2 convened the higher education community, formalized their needs through the NET+ AWS Service Advisory Group, and advocated directly with AWS. That advocacy influenced Amazon Web Services to develop and release a product feature, Flexible Cost Allocation for AWS Transit Gateway, that benefits research institutions and higher education globally.
Planting in Progress
And there are more benefits to come! We continue to cultivate relationships, explore new services, and develop more resources for you. One example is the “Building the Case for Vendor Management” series hosted monthly by BPLAC’s Vendor Community of Practice throughout 2026. If you are interested in exploring strategies for effectively managing your IT vendors, we invite you to learn and grow alongside a network of peers.
Another is the RFP process NET+ currently has under way for an identity proofing service that enables institutions to meet federal compliance requirements for NIH research data access. Internet2 is currently hosting demonstration sessions with selected respondents; you can stay up to date here. (In the meantime, identity proofing continues to be the subject of crucial conversations like the one had at Community Exchange this month, which yielded “Three Identity Proofing Insights Worth Everyone’s Attention.”)
We recognize that tending to the garden of your institution’s technology needs is a labor of love. We’re right beside you, cultivating the soil and planting the seeds that will bear fruit to benefit your individual institutions as well as the entire R&E cloud community. As American horticulturist Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858-1954) once observed, “a garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.”
On that note, we also acknowledge that much of our progress is due to efforts expended by the many NET+ community volunteers who offer their experience and expertise to move our work forward. To that end, we extended our thanks and highlighted your efforts in observance of National Volunteer Appreciation Week.
Let’s keep growing together. The seeds we plant today – one conversation, relationship, resource, and service at a time – will make for a richer, more level field of endeavor for us all. What follows are additional important initiatives we want to highlight as we continue to cultivate this community together.
Secure Your Research with CLASS
With content for CIOs, research leaders, architects, and developers, this three-phase webinar and workshop series is designed to inform and empower your entire institution in navigating cloud technologies for research.
Phase 1, which focused on institutional strategy, has concluded and yielded some key insights about the challenges facing institutions as well as shedding light on the way forward to addressing them. Phases 2 and 3 will focus on technical planning and implementation, respectively.
We still have a lot of ground to cover in the series. If you haven’t already, join us for upcoming webinars and workshops so you stay informed about what’s ahead.
Other Cloud Program Updates
Cloud Connectivity Expanding to Seattle and Newark
Internet2 Cloud Connect is expanding its interconnect footprint to include Seattle and Newark, bringing the total number of I2CC-supported locations to seven. These additions complement existing sites in Ashburn, Chicago, Dallas, San Jose, and Los Angeles, giving member institutions more options for geographically distributed and resilient private cloud connectivity to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud.
Enhancing Cloud Connectivity with Internet2’s Route Policy Feature
Internet2 Virtual Networks now supports custom BGP Route Policy for Layer 3 connections using Cloud Routers within the Insight Console. This feature gives institutions fine-grained control over BGP routing — enabling use cases such as prefix filtering, traffic engineering, and protection against exceeding prefix limits — all configurable through a self-service interface without opening a support ticket. Full documentation is available at console.internet2.edu/docs/virtual-networks-route-policy.
New and Next
Cloud Scorecard Finder Celebrates Its One-Year Anniversary!
When we launched the new Cloud Scorecard Finder a year ago, we invited the community to explore this expanded resource to identify and assess technology aligned with the needs of research and higher ed stakeholders. This community-driven, open-source platform continues to expand, adding new features and participating providers. In the past year, we added 28 new services, ranging from offerings from technology leaders, such as Snowflake and UpGuard, to emerging tech providers, such as Trinka AI and Prediction Guard. You can learn more about these and our latest participants listed below by regularly referencing the Cloud Scorecard Finder.
Here are the new Internet2 Cloud Scorecard participants in the past quarter:
If there is a cloud service you would like to see listed, please reach out to us with your suggestion(s) and encourage tech providers to enroll.
Spotlight on NET+ Service Providers
We’re pleased to continue inviting NET+ service providers to share articles, blog posts, webinars, or other content relevant to cloud practitioners in the R&E community. Take a look at the resources they shared this quarter:
- CrashPlan – Managing institutional data without putting more burden on IT team or end users: Check out this whitepaper exploring a sustainable approach to managing institutional data by treating M365 data growth as a lifecycle problem, not just a storage problem; using policy-driven archiving to stay under quota automatically, and reducing risk while improving governance and user experience.
- Google – Advancing AI literacy for educators: Beginning May 13, the Google AI Educator Series will provide free, standards-aligned AI literacy training for K-12 teachers and higher education faculty. Learn from Google, in partnership with ISTE+ASCD, through bite-sized sessions designed to meet your schedule.
- Lab Archives – Helping researchers detect image problems earlier: Image integrity issues are more common and costly than many realize. Learn how LabArchives and Proofing AI are helping researchers detect problems earlier by bringing AI-powered screening directly into the ELN workflow.
- Panopto – Exploring how video supports AI-aware teaching and assessment: Join us for a free webinar, Teaching in the Age of AI, on May 7. Learn 6 practical ways video transforms learning. Register here.
This is a regular feature in our quarterly newsletter, so be sure to keep an eye out for it!
Keep Up With the Cloud
As always, we welcome your ideas and appreciate your contributions to our cloud programs! Interested in participating in one or more NET+ service evaluations? Or have feedback for other prospective services for the program? Don’t know where to start? Email cloud@internet2.edu.
Want to catch up with us in real life, not just in the cloud? Check out some of the places we will be.
Catching Up on the Cloud brings you all the latest Internet2 cloud updates. Whether you’re supporting the academic enterprise, research domain, or anything in between, these timely announcements and updates will help you with the best solutions for implementing cloud services at your institution.
About the Author(s)
Sean O’Brien leads Internet2’s NET+ cloud service program working with institutions on the collaborative development, evaluation, and management of cloud services for the research and education community. He has worked in a variety of roles in higher education and the private sector focusing on cloud enablement, institutional research, and project management.