Important Announcent Regarding Changes to the DCO Fee Structure
Effective November 10, 2011
Dear EECS faculty and staff,
The funding model for EECS computing infrastructure has changed. The
old schedule of fees expired September 30, 2011, and due to extensive
changes in both technology and policy, the UM Cost Reimbursement
Office would not approve a renewal without significant changes. After
extensive consideration of possible options by the EECS co-chairs and
business managers, the university cost reimbursement office, and the
DCO staff, a new fee schedule was developed and approved by UM Cost
Reimbursement effective October 1, 2011.
The major components of the new fee model are as follows:
* The $15/month recurring software fee is eliminated. DCO will cover
departmental cost sharing on widely used software site licenses
without specific recharges (for example, Matlab and Mathematica, and
the more widely used electronics CAD packages). Machine owners will
be responsible for directly paying for software licenses that have a
specific per machine charge and for higher priced software packages
used in specific research areas.
* The $10/month per recurring backup fee is eliminated. All EECS
faculty and staff will be entitled to 100 GB of backed up data at no
additional charge. People who need more than 100 GB backed up may
purchase additional backup capacity at a rate of $100 per additional
100 GB, billed one time only.
* The new support and infrastructure fee is a $400 one-time fee for
each new desktop, laptop, or server computer purchased new with
university funds. A reduced fee of $104 will apply to other
departmentally funded computing equipment, including iPads and similar
devices, smartphones, networked printers, etc. Equipment purchased
used (such as through a CAEN sale) or used equipment brought into EECS
from another department or institution will also qualify for the $104
fee. Due to many changes to the campus network funding models and the
widespread use of wireless networking, these fees are no longer
connected in any way to the network; they apply to all desktop,
laptop, and server computers regardless of whether they have network
connections.
Several factors necessitated these changes, including expanded
university mandates for security monitoring and reporting and backup
and disaster recovery, changes to CAEN's cost sharing for software
site licenses, and changes to the network infrastructure. In most
cases we expect the new fee schedule to result in reduced costs to
faculty. Under the old model, in the common case of a faculty machine
purchased new and subscribed to software and backups, the cost was
$300 initially and $25 per month in quarterly billed recurring fees.
This has been replaced with a single $400 cost one time for the life
of the computer.
We recognize that some specialized situations, such as research
computational clusters, may require individual accommodation. The new
fee model allows for this; the DCO staff will work with individual
faculty members and the department administration to interpret the fee
schedule in a reasonable and fair way for unusual installations.
---
Trevor Mudge
November 10, 2011
[updated fall 2014 to reflect an adjustment of the reduced fee from
$100 to $104 by the accountants at the UM Cost Reimbursement office]
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