I'm afraid that article is not accurate at all. When reading something about SUNY if it mentions an IT decision being made system wide it's most likely inaccurate bullshit. Nearly every campus has it's own disjoint IT and outside of strong suggestions and price incentives each campus can make it's own choices.

Examples: Oracle is effectively "free" for campuses so why not use that? And using something like Banner or Blackboard lets you ride on existing contracts and share dedicated resource centers. But it's not mandated and there are non-Blackboard campuses (as an example).

There is no Office 365 global movement or mandate in SUNY. It's simply one of two choices IF one decides to use them. It just means each campus doesn't have to bother putting together their own contract as SUNY central took care of it already.