Public Higher Education Bulletin

This emergency/quick purchase was required due to a situation in which immediate action was needed to prevent any disruption in University services.

Chicago State University (CSU) has for the past 16 years utilized a Hewlett-Packard 9000 system to process its SunGard Banner system Data for the entire University. The average life span for such a system is about 5 years. The University has been plagued with Banner system problems. Most recently in March 2010, the power supply and the UPS system running the backup power supply both failed. Again, in May 2010, the Controller for this system failed. The failure on CSU's Banner machine was catastrophic. In both failures, the University was able to get the machine back up and running within a day, with no loss of data yet issued caused a serious disruption to the University. As a result of these failures, I along with the University’s Information Technology Department have determined that an emergency situation exist and in order to prevent or minimize serious disruption in University services immediate action is needed to purchase the replacement equipment. CSU proposes to acquire through HP a system which will allow CSU to obviate the failure of the banner machine, and including modernizing the backup system from a tape storage system to in-network storage in addition to media storage to provide for adequate backup to the university. CSU will be acquiring HP Reliant class blade server, VMWare virtual server system, HP Enterprise Virtual Array, HP Data Protector, and HP Insight Manager and Insight Controller. CSU will also finance this equipment in a finance lease for four years through HP Finance. The terms of the lease are below: Lesser: Hewlett-Packard Financial Services Company. Lease Plan/Type: Fair Market Value Lease Term/Term: 4 years. Total Cost: $396,065.61 0.25498/1.33% $100,988.69 (4)