Cisco’s State, Local, and Education (SLED) Western Operation team, led by Operations Director Mark Ronaldson and Higher Education Account Executive Koby Kumasaka, has been awarded CENIC’s 2016 Innovations in Networking Award as Corporate Partner.
Thanks to the commitment of Mark’s team and their understanding of the importance of high-speed broadband for the research and education communities in California, Cisco SLED Western Operation and CENIC have been able to move forward on numerous initiatives in support of these communities, implementing Cisco’s newest initiative: the Sponsored Pricing Discount Program for CENIC Associates.
Through this initiative, public libraries – CENIC’s newest segment – were able to purchase Cisco equipment and services at significant savings, thereby easing the transition from their previous megabit networks to the CENIC CalREN gigabit network. Numerous K12 Schools participating in the State’s Broadband Infrastructure Improvement Grants (BIIG) program, also took advantage of Cisco’s generous discounts, enabling those schools, most of which had the slowest connection speeds among California’s K12 schools, to move to the front of the class with some of the fastest connections to the CalREN network.
With Cisco’s encouragement, other CENIC segments may participate in future discount programs. The SLED Western Operation team’s enthusiastic and imaginative engagement with the CENIC community has had an enormous impact in California.
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