The University of Michigan recently entered into an agreement with Adobe that provides all faculty, staff and students on the Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses and at Michigan Medicine with access to Adobe Creative Cloud apps.
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The agreement moves forward an Information and Technology Services initiative that is based on a desire to build partnerships that would benefit the entire university community.
“Working with the university community, and with support from President (Mark) Schlissel, we are excited to be able to offer these creative tools to our entire community,” said Ravi Pendse, vice president for information technology and chief information officer.
“I am very proud of the efforts of my ITS colleagues and grateful for the partnership of the campus community to make this happen in such a timely manner.”
Previously, U-M units, departments and even individuals purchased Adobe subscriptions and products based on an array of group or personal needs. The negotiated enterprise agreement with Adobe levels the playing field and allows everyone to have full access to tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, In-Design and Dreamweaver.
Individuals who are already Creative Cloud subscribers can terminate their contracts and use the U-M license without incurring a termination fee.
“I am extremely proud to have worked on the Creative Cloud efforts,” said Robert Jones, executive director of support services at ITS. “This is IT at its best, inclusive and equitable. When IT provides access to all, we are able to remove socio-economic barriers to provide tooling to help equalize our campus.
“These decisions enable us to save costs and work better together to serve those who are trying to change the world — our faculty, students and staff.”
U-M community members may install and use the software on up to two computers, including their personal computer. Some applications — such as Premiere Rush, Spark and others — also run on mobile devices, with the ability to share projects seamlessly from one device to another. The mobile app does not count toward the two-computer limit.
Each subscriber has 100 gigabytes of cloud-based storage and can access files stored in the cloud from any device using file sync or a web browser. The Creative Cloud suite is available on personally managed machines and across Campus Computing Sites and university-managed machines.
“Many of our students commute and don’t always have the ability to get to the computer labs,” said Carrie Shumaker, CIO at UM-Dearborn. “We appreciate this opportunity that allows our students to use the Adobe apps at home as well as in all of our computer labs.”
Creative Cloud is not automatically available for affiliates with the Human Resources role of “trades,” temporary staff, sponsored affiliates, retirees or alumni. For those who have a university-related need, access can be requested by completing the Adobe access request form.
“The interest and desire to expand and experiment with digital scholarship has grown tremendously,” said Cathy Curley, CIO of LSA Technology Services. “We are very pleased to partner across the institution to bring these digital tools to the entire U-M community.”
“The response from the community since this announcement has been incredible,” Pendse said. “We love getting feedback from all of you, and we look forward to seeing what you create.”
