The University of Maine System and the Maine Department of Administrative and Financial Services (DAFS) – through its Office of Information Technology – have approved a five-year licensing agreement.

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The agreement will result in a co-location of data storage and service at the University Services Information Technology Data Center on the University of Maine campus in Orono.

The partnership between the State of Maine and the University of Maine System takes advantage of excess capacity at the state-of-the-art data center in Orono that was upgraded in 2013.  The $4 million data center project is part of the work Maine’s public universities have done to consolidate, centralize, and improve technology services and data security.  The ongoing work to better serve Maine as One University also involves improving connectivity and technology-enabled collaboration among the campuses and extending access to public higher education programming into every Maine community.

In September 2013, the Governor’s Office of Policy and Management – led at the time by current DAFS Commissioner Richard Rosen - issued a report recommending University collaboration with the Maine Office of Information Technology to create efficiencies and reduce costs.  A team assembled by the Chief Information Officers of both the State and the University of Maine System identified the potential sharing of data center assets as certain State leased data center space came up for renewal.

The initial five-year license period for the co-location partnership is expected to generate $850,000 in hosting revenue for the University of Maine System and help contain costs for the State and the System as data needs and technology utilization continue to grow.  Sharing the modern data center also ensures that Maine’s state agencies and public universities have critical backup capacity, disaster recovery resources, and security in place to protect mission-critical data as well as the privacy of the students and state residents served.

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