Welcome to the new and improved MAGPI website!  We have taken great pains to create a resource for you that is easier to navigate and will provide a greater volume of information that is current and useful to our members and the thousands of visitors that wish to explore the many activities and projects we are involved in.  Please provide any of the MAGPI staff members with your feedback, as improvement is never a static process, but, like technology is in a constant state of change.

Speaking of change, as we conclude our 9th fiscal year, I am both amazed and pleased at the growth in services and subscribing institutions that MAGPI has experienced.  From the original two members in 1999 we now support almost 700 separate entities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the Commonwealth of Kentucky.  Our first and only service offering was access to the national network, Internet2 and now we offer everything from educational programming to Co-Location facilities, to Optical Network design and management.  We’ve received two awards from Internet2 and one from the University of Pennsylvania for outstanding excellence in serving the community.

But we understand the need to constantly evaluate our role and its relevance to the requirements of a diverse and dynamic community.  The economic crisis this past year has had an effect on all of our members and it was imperative that we look for ways to improve our service offerings without increasing the fee structure and thereby add value to the relationship with MAGPI.  So we reviewed utilization reports on direct connected institutions and determined that while many sites could use more bandwidth, their budgets simply could not afford any increased costs.  Effective July 1st, 2009, we will be reducing the rate structure per Megabit for connections at 60 Mbps and higher.  This will permit a significant number of subscribers to add the needed bandwidth and maintain the same or lower cost per month.

We are also hiring one additional staff person on the first of July.  A “Multi-Media Services Manager” will be available to work with members on a wide variety of topics such as videoconferencing, IPTV, podcasting, virtual reality, and other subjects of interest.  We have seen the enormous growth in the use of technology in the classroom and want to make sure that the resources you need are available to support it.  Stay tuned for a name and an email address on this new website.

The first program ever produced by MAGPI was the collaboration between international business students at the Wharton Lauder Institute and the University of Grenoble in France.  Jennifer and I encountered some significant obstacles during that process, but walked away afterwards feeling very good about what we had done.  This past year, Heather has produced over 120 interactive and professional development programs for K20 education at no cost to the members.

In 1999, the technical language of our network contained terms like T-1 and OC-3.  We spoke about large file transfers being in the Megabit range and planned for expanding to the unthinkable Gigabit connection to Internet2.  This past year we facilitated a dark fiber IRU and optical electronics that gave two government labs access to a 10 Gigabit Ethernet circuit from Princeton, NJ to McLean, VA.  Individually, neither facility could afford such a connection, but we created a declining cost model that paid for the electronics and the fiber, enabling both agencies to benefit from the economies of scale.  This accomplishment is not even a year old and one lab is now looking to triple their capacity by January, 2010, thanks to new funding from the U.S. Government.

So we are thinking of everything we can to increase and improve the service offerings, and decrease the expense.  In this next year, I would like to improve the personal communications between MAGPI and its members.  In much the same fashion as Internet2 created four new Advisory Councils, I will be assembling groups along different lines to guide our growth to ensure we do not lose sight of those same objectives that brought us this far; new technology introductions, development of educational applications, and sustainability through economies of scale.

All the Best,
Greg Palmer
MAGPI Executive Director
June 2009

Click below to read past Director's Corners

• Vol. 1 Director's Corner
• Vol. 2 Director's Corner
• Vol. 3 Director's Corner
• Vol. 4 Director's Corner
• Vol. 5 Director's Corner