By SHANNON O. WELLS

Since 2022, software licensing costs for the University increased by roughly 21%, representing an $8 million gain on a total $34 million cost.

“This is a big expense for the institution,” noted Michael Arenth, interim executive director of educational technologies in the University Center for Teaching and Learning. He added that the growing demand and cost for enterprise licensing of software at the institution has been “kind of sneaking up on the University.”

As he explained in a presentation during the April 27 meeting of the Senate Computing and Information Technology Committee — its last of the 2025-26 academic year — Arenth is co-leading the Enterprise Software Review Committee.

Charged with evaluating the current software application environment, committee goals include looking for opportunities to reduce costs, improve processes, establish governance, reduce risks and enhance user experiences.

“The opportunity here is that we can recognize that there’s an opportunity,” he said. “We identified 19 different processes that people can follow to license software at the institution, and it’s hugely wasteful.”

As an example, Pitt Digital has performed more than 500 security reviews for software licenses, because requests come in from “all different places.”

That not only taxes resources, but also is frustrating for the end users, “because it takes a while, then, to get that review process done.”

“We’re thinking that by going through this process, we (can) create a software portal that will share information with the end users to see what software tools are easily already available at the institution,” Arenth explained, noting that if something’s already identified, there will be a clear path to submit a request for software “that will be expedited, and they can track the progress of those requests.”

Michelle Niedermeyer, executive director of enterprise applications at Pitt Digital, explained that the committee is a “cross-representative collaborative group,” including representatives from every senior officer area at Pitt. “We’re really excited that we get that voice throughout the University to understand this problem statement that we’re sharing here with you. But also (because of the opportunity to) realize savings, provide more transparency, better service, and reduce risk.

Currently unmanaged software carries a risk for the University, leading potentially to data security breaches from an application or software of which the security team is unaware. “And we want to make sure that we are reducing those risks and (being) very mindful of what the University spends when it comes to software applications,” she said.

Calling the 19 pathways Pitt employees have to purchase software and applications a “frustrating experience,” Niedermeyer said the committee will look at recommendations to help “optimize that experience and make it more streamlined and effective and efficient.”

With information gathered from security review data of recent years, the next steps include engaging with “major players” in purchasing software, such as Pitt’s directors of administration, information technology partners and Staff Council to “capture more of their voice and understand their experiences.”

A newly created portal or database could allow individuals to see what Pitt already has in its portfolio instead of purchasing something new, “and also look at where there may be some redundancies in what we have, and then, of course, optimize that user experience,” she said.

The committee plans to “dive deeper” this spring and summer and interview individuals with the goal of creating “recommendations that we can, again, realize savings, improve the service and transparency.”

Responding to a question about a process to eliminate software and keep track of its use, Niedermeyer said the committee will examine that once it gets a full inventory of what entities don’t own or are managing within a school or department.

“There may be opportunities to retire or exit something, especially If there’s redundancies, and understanding the requirements that are needed,” Neidermeyer said.

Sponsored accounts

In other computing news, Brian Hart, policies and governance coordinator for Pitt Digital, shared an initiative intended to better categorize and manage “sponsored accounts” created for someone such as a visiting faculty member or student in a special program.

“There are probably 20 or 30 different reasons why these kinds of accounts are often created, but we don’t always know what those reasons are,” he explained. “Part of the initiative that’s underway here is just to get some management (or) some categorization into this, so that we know what these accounts are for.”

Aside from primary and sponsored accounts, there are resource accounts created for things like conference rooms and calendars for scheduling meetings in a particular place. “Resource accounts are created for things that are not people, or they may be shared accounts for departments and things like that.”

This initiative will not change or take away anyone’s account or give an account to someone without one. “It really is about managing the accounts that we have that are manually created a little bit more effectively,” Hart said.

That involves working with the Pitt’s responsibility center accounts administrators to categorize the 15,000 to 20,000 accounts.

“If we can … when accounts are created, the responsibility center account administrator … is asked to attach a reason to it,” he said. “When you’re looking to figure out what an account is associated with, why it’s created, even within the responsibility centers, it becomes very difficult to do that, because it’s not always clear what it’s there for.”

The initiative will apply categories to the accounts to document that it is, for example, associated with an incoming employee. “Somebody who gets a sponsored account is an incoming employee until they get a payroll record, and then that sponsored account becomes their primary account,” Hart explained.

Going forward, every sponsored and resource account must be annually reviewed and determined if it’s still needed. “In some of those cases, we may call for a review,” he said, which doesn’t mean an account will go away. “It just means somebody is looking at it to determine if it’s still needed or not.

“We can make sure that there aren’t accounts that are kept for generations, really, without any need to continue to exist. And the responsibility center administrators have better control over what they’re creating, what they’re preserving, what they’re continuing to allow to exist.”

Mark Henderson, vice chancellor and chief information officer, reminded the committee that the “wild card in all of this” is that all storage-consuming accounts go against Microsoft’s OneDrive and SharePoint space allotment for Pitt. The software giant alerted the University that by September — at its current rate surpassing the established two-petabyte limit — Pitt will see a fee increase of between $1.2 million and $1.4 million per year.

“We are working with all of the RC heads, because one size does not fit all, and we’ve done a lot of work in terms of analyzing all unit consumptions of storage, across those things that will be impacted by the limits that Microsoft is imposing,” he said, noting conversations with RC heads are underway.

Claude AI connection

Dan McGaughey from Pitt’s Digital AI Engagement Team, shared that the Microsoft 365 connector for Anthropic artificial intelligence is available now in Pitt’s Claude for Education system.

This allows a secure connection between Claude for Education and Pitt’s various Microsoft 365 tools, including email, Teams, Messages, OneDrive and SharePoint. “What it really allows you to do is to go into the Claude settings menu under ‘customize’ and then you as a user can give the connector the permissions that you would like to give.

“There’s no top-down management of this. Each user gets to control what content they would like Claude to have access to,” he noted. “This is secure with our vendor relationships with both Microsoft and Claude, so no data is used to train Claude models, and there’s no transition of information out of Pitt’s secure environments when you use these tools.”

As the connection is “read only,” there’s no risk that Claude could take an action on your behalf, such as send an email or delete a file.

Responding to a question, McGaughey clarified that it is “one-way connection. It could read an email, and it could craft a response for you if you would like, but you would then need to take that response and put it in your email and send it,” he explained.

Klaus Libertus, teaching assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, recommended not logging in via Gmail, as Claude “reliably” does for him. “Make sure you log in with Pitt, because it likes to do that … it comes back to Gmail.”

Noting Libertus’ “really good point,” McGaughey directed those with questions to utilize Pitt Digital’s online knowledge-based articles section.

Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.

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