Purchasing Guidelines

General Guidance

To best ensure long term support, we prefer to purchase systems we consider “enterprise-ready”
“Enterprise-ready” generally is defined as: having good driver support, available long-term warranty options, next-day on-site repair service, and capable of running enterprise-grade operating systems.
Non-“enterprise-ready” systems have generally proven to have a higher total cost of ownership to the College.
Purchasing guidelines at Texas A&M University push us heavily toward us making purchases from HUB (Historically Underutilized Business) vendors.
HUB vendors generally only sell systems to Texas A&M University that meet this definition of “enterprise-ready” due to Texas DIR requirements. This may mean systems sold by HUB vendors incur higher initial costs, but have lower costs over time.

All purchases of computers, (including, but not limited to, desktops, laptops, and tablet computing devices), should be ordered by College of Architecture Information Technology Services staff.
Federal, state, and local controls now mandate certain data security requirements be adhered to; routing all orders through ITS staff helps us ensure these requirements are met.

Personal office printers may be purchased by departmental administrative coordinators on behalf of other staff and faculty; however, these printers may not be connected to the campus network using either a wired or wireless connection.
Purchases of printers that will be connected to a network must be ordered through ITS, as these require specific network configurations.
Large, multi-function copier/printers, such as Xerox units, are generally leased and maintained by a third party provider.
Individual 3D printer purchases are discouraged; we recommend you work with the MakerPlace supervisor to determine your needs to see if our existing printers will meet them or if a new type of printer or material can be implemented in the MakerPlace.

Computing accessories (such as, but not limited to: mice, keyboards, USB hubs, etc.) are generally allowed for purchase by individuals.
If you would like us to determine if a particular accessory will be compatible with your other devices, we will be happy to do so.
We can order accessories on your behalf if you would like, and deliver and set them up at a time convenient for you.
Please note that the accessories we generally order are "bare bones". If you have a preference on style of keyboard, for example, we encourage you to send us a link to the exact model you want.

All software purchases should be ordered by College of Architecture Information Technology Services staff.
This is also due to new data security requirements at the federal, state and university level.
In particular, personal subscriptions to cloud services (i.e. software as a service, such as Dropbox or another web application) are prohibited from storing Confidential or Restricted data, per a new Texas A&M University SAP (Standard Administrative Procedure) in effect September 1, 2020; more information will be distributed regarding this SAP as soon as we have it.