College and university administrators everywhere are struggling with the challenges of trying to "do more with less" in terms of balancing mandates and resources. The Internet has enabled new approaches for teaching and learning, vast interinstitutional collaborations in humanities and scientific research, and a renewed focus on the college/university as an engine of economic growth for a state or region. These opportunities, however, have been accompanied by an enormous appetite for the resources needed to create and sustain the information technology (IT) infrastructure on which the opportunities are based. The challenge is to leverage IT for the reliable services and innovation that are at the core of the educational enterprise without robbing the academic treasury to do so. This article will focus on three projects that have attracted broad interest in higher education: (1) the uPortal project; (2) the Sakai Project, and (3) the Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI). These three projects are designed to preintegrate with each other, which will further reduce local implementation costs for higher education.