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CENIC Offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service Tools

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) now offers a suite of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud services for member institutions in California's research and education community, eliminating the need to conduct local procurement processes for these services.

The California Community Colleges, the California State University and the University of California systems participated in the process of selecting CenturyLink, FireHost and Verizon as CENIC's cloud service providers, making it easier for CENIC member institutions to adopt cloud services for research, education and administrative activities.

"Our colleges now have the ability to access superior virtual data center services directly peered with the CENIC network," said Tim Calhoon, executive director of the California Community Colleges Technology Center, in a prepared statement. "The speed and security afforded by this arrangement will enable the colleges to further assure that the information and online applications used by over 2 million community college students, faculty and staff are always available."

IaaS services available through CENIC include:

  • FireHost's fully managed secure cloud infrastructure featuring multilayered security with IP reputation filtering, DDOS prevention, Web application firewalling, IDS/IPS and encryption;
  • CenturyLink Cloud services, including customizable virtual servers, cloud blueprint executable templates, and network and application services; and
  • Verizon enterprise-class cloud computing and data center solutions, including a managed enterprise cloud computing platform, virtualized disaster recovery and online-offsite data backup and restoration capabilities.

CENIC is a nonprofit organization formed to provide networking services to California's education and research communities.

Further information about cloud service available to CENIC member institutions can be found on the CENIC site.

About the Author

Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].

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