Guiding Smarter Technology Investments for Research and Beyond
For Lou Malvasi, what began as a post-college job turned into a decade-long journey with the leading global technology solutions provider, SHI. After starting in inside sales targeting small state and local government customers, Malvasi rose through the ranks, eventually landing on SHI’s Global Accounts team. There, he spent three years learning directly from executive leadership, honing his ability to engage with high-level customers, and developing a more strategic, mature understanding of SHI’s value. “That experience really shaped how I approached customer relationships,” reflects Malvasi. “I learned how customer outlooks differ between small and large customers.”
Six years ago, Malvasi had an opportunity to return to the public sector of SHI with a focus on R1 research universities in New York and New Jersey and quickly found success supporting programs in research computing, networking, AI, and device deployment. “In my current role as Senior District Manager of Strategic Education, R1 Universities, I began to organically grow a team behind me, and over the last 18 months, I have worked closely with SHI senior leadership to continue to expand it into a dedicated team serving R1 universities across the East Coast,” explains Malvasi. “This has come with significant managerial and operational responsibility, but also a major investment in aligning SHI’s resources to support cutting-edge research across these universities.”
Community colleges, K–12 districts, and state and local governments can all take advantage of the same streamlined procurement and deployment model. TeCHS isn’t just focused on large research universities, it’s designed to support institutions across New Jersey and nationally. We’re actively working to expand awareness and adoption beyond the tri-state area so more organizations can tap into innovation and collaboration opportunities.
Bringing Enterprise-Level Solutions to Higher Ed
As Malvasi’s team has grown, so too has its ability to tackle the increasingly complex technological needs of R1 institutions. Many of these universities operate at the scale of major corporations and require more than just standard IT support. For SHI, that means bringing enterprise-level solutions to higher education. “We treat R1 institutions like Fortune 100 customers,” says Malvasi. “They have the scale and the same needs as the global customers I supported in the past. Our approach is backed by SHI’s significant infrastructure, including two integration centers, an AI and cybersecurity lab, and a customer innovation center. These resources and investment from SHI allow my team to deliver hands-on value to institutions.”
“We’re putting value back into the programs we support, whether that’s device procurement and configuration, or full-service networking and data center deployments,” Malvasi continues. “This includes bringing stock into our integration centers, handling services like asset tagging and autopilot enrollment, while my project management team handles the deployment and logistics of these devices. The same applies to networking and infrastructure projects, where SHI supports universities in building the backbone needed to support research at scale. We’re focused on delivering real, tangible value to our university partners as a true VARshould.”
Modernizing and Streamlining Procurement
Procurement has long been one of the more time-consuming aspects of technology adoption in higher education, especially for R1 institutions managing complex, multi-layered IT projects. But through SHI’s partnership with Edge and the development of the TeCHS catalog, that dynamic is changing. “The TeCHS contract has really been a visionary step forward—a 21st-century technology contract,” says Malvasi. “State contracts, in many cases, are still very archaic in how institutions are allowed to procure. For R1 universities, where nearly every project involves a combination of hardware, software, and services, traditional procurement methods can create unnecessary complications. Historically, you had to buy hardware on one contract with one reseller, software on another, and then find a third services contract to pull it all together.”
The EdgeMarket TeCHS catalog through SHI streamlines that process by providing a centralized, flexible, and scalable platform. “TeCHS allows us to be a true one-stop shop, not just for procurement, but also for deployment,” shares Malvasi. “The contract gives institutions one point of accountability across the entire lifecycle of a project, which has paid tremendous dividends. We’ve heard from a number of university procurement teams how this contract is accelerating internal projects that used to be slowed down by outdated procurement models. This solution is not just more efficient; it’s enabling real progress.”
Malvasi says the TeCHS contract benefits extend well beyond R1 institutions. “Community colleges, K–12 districts, and state and local governments can all take advantage of the same streamlined procurement and deployment model. TeCHS isn’t just focused on large research universities, it’s designed to support institutions across New Jersey and nationally. We’re actively working to expand awareness and adoption beyond the tri-state area so more organizations can tap into innovation and collaboration opportunities.”
Powering Informed Decision-Making
R1 universities are leading the charge in fields like AI, data science, and life sciences, but those advances come with steep infrastructure demands. According to Malvasi, the need for high-performance computing resources, particularly GPUs, is at an all-time high. “AI infrastructure is the predominant focus right now for R1 institutions. The demand for GPUs far exceeds the available supply, making it an extremely competitive space.”
To help institutions navigate this challenge, SHI focuses on more than just procurement, it supports smarter decision-making before major investments are made. “Through SHI’s AI and Cyber Lab, schools gain access to on-premises and cloud infrastructure for testing and validation,” explains Malvasi. “This allows principal investigators and faculty to run real-world application scenarios before purchasing large-scale systems. We work closely with data science teams and researchers to test their applications in a services engagement and look at everything, including compute, power, cooling, and connectivity, to deliver a detailed output of what infrastructure is truly needed. This approach not only reduces risk and optimizes cost, but also strengthens the institution’s position when competing for large federal research grants. We want to help faculty align their technical requirements with the realities of funding and deployment.”
This hands-on, end-to-end support model has already proven invaluable for institutions facing high-stakes research timelines. Malvasi recalls a recent project with an R1 university in the Northeast that had secured a major grant, but faced a tight deadline to deploy infrastructure in order to access the funding. “This institution had a critical deployment tied directly to future research outcomes,” explains Malvasi. “SHI worked closely with the university’s vice president of research to design, procure, and implement a GPU-powered solution based on NVIDIA infrastructure. In a very short timeline, the SHI team not only handled the architecture and logistics, but also traveled onsite to handle the deployment services needed to ensure the system was fully operational by the grant deadline. We’re in phase four of that deployment today and it helps lay the groundwork for future breakthroughs by ensuring researchers have the tools they need for success.”
Supporting Centralized IT and Security
With increasingly complex IT ecosystems and distributed infrastructures, cybersecurity has become both a strategic priority and a growing challenge for R1 universities. “We see a lot of decentralized environments where individual departments are managing their own tools and infrastructure, which introduces significant risk,” explains Malvasi. “To help address this, we have Stratascale, a wholly owned cybersecurity subsidiary of SHI, that delivers specialized consulting and managed cybersecurity services tailored to the needs of higher education.”
Through SHI’s AI and Cyber Lab, schools gain access to on-premises and cloud infrastructure for testing and validation. This allows principal investigators and faculty to run real-world application scenarios before purchasing large-scale systems. We work closely with data science teams and researchers to test their applications in a six-week sprint and look at everything, including compute, power, cooling, and connectivity, to deliver a detailed output of what infrastructure is truly needed. This approach not only reduces risk and optimizes cost, but also strengthens the institution’s position when competing for large federal research grants. We want to help faculty align their technical requirements with the realities of funding and deployment.
An R1 university recently engaged SHI to perform a complete cybersecurity program overhaul, from staffing and processes to tools and governance. “This was a full-scale engagement over 12 weeks,” shares Malvasi. “We worked directly with executive leadership, interviewed key stakeholders across the institution, and delivered comprehensive recommendations on how to centralize and strengthen their cybersecurity posture. The assessment not only identified critical gaps, but also proposed actionable strategies, such as consolidating redundant tools and rethinking the organizational structure to support centralized IT and security oversight.”
As new technology trends emerge, Malvasi says a large focus will continue to be on AI. “One of the most significant shifts is the rise of GPU-as-a-Service models. Rather than investing millions into on-premises infrastructure, many institutions are looking into specialized providers, beyond the major public cloud players, to offer access to powerful, shared GPU clusters. There are neocloud companies, like CoreWeave, that are standing up massive GPU environments. Faculty and institutions can tap into that infrastructure without the financial burden of owning it outright.
This shift offers scalability and speed, especially for institutions that need access to high-performance computing but lack the budget or resources to build and maintain it themselves. “For our research 1 customers, they tend to be at the forefront of innovation leveraging all facets of infrastructure (on-prem,cloud/colo) to support their needs—so we need to make sure SHI can support and adapt to these needs as well.”
Another trend that’s gaining urgency is power and infrastructure modernization. “As research institutions accelerate their AI and data science initiatives, many are discovering that their legacy data centers aren’t built to support the next generation of high-density compute,” explains Marvasi. “We’re seeing new clusters from NVIDIA that require 100 times more power than what current data centers were designed for. This is not just an IT problem, it’s a facilities and municipal infrastructure issue. These demands are triggering a reevaluation of how universities and even entire communities plan for the future. You’ll need megawatts of power to fuel what a lot of these institutions want to do, and that will likely reshape not just campus IT strategy, but also how schools work with utilities, cities, and states to support innovation at scale.”
With a look toward the future, Malvasi says the partnership with Edge remains a central part of SHI’s growth strategy and its expansion beyond the Northeast. “We’ve had tremendous success in this region thanks to the strength of both the Edge and SHI brands. But the next chapter is about extending that reach to new markets and new segments. We’re not just thinking in broad strokes anymore. We’re segmenting our approach and supporting R1 universities, large government agencies, K–12 districts, and state and local entities each in a way that reflects their unique challenges. That focus is creating real efficiencies for both us and our customers.”
As the TeCHS contract continues to evolve, the vision for what’s next is already taking shape. “We’d love to see a TeCHS 2.0,” says Malvasi. “Something that brings AI infrastructure and advanced services into the fold and goes well beyond traditional IT, and we want to be ready with Edge to help meet these demands head on.”