Connect with us

Technology

OMNIA Partners Adds 10 New Suppliers to its E-Commerce Platform and Surpasses 8 Million Products Available for Online Purchase

Published

on

Nearly 40,000 public sector employees are now using OPUS, the OMNIA Partners member portal, to find and buy goods and services instantly using industry leading cooperative contracts.

FRANKLIN, Tenn., July 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — OMNIA Partners, the nation’s largest and most experienced cooperative purchasing organization for the public and private sectors, today announced the latest expansion of OPUS, its free member portal, which includes the first ever e-commerce platform that allows public sector agencies and nonprofits to buy from multiple suppliers with one online shopping cart using publicly solicited and competitively bid cooperative contracts.

Ten new, nationally recognized suppliers have made their products available for purchase in OPUS, bringing total available SKUs to more than 8 million. OMNIA Partners members can now instantly purchase products across nearly 200 categories with their free member account.

New suppliers who have made online purchasing available to OMNIA Partners members include: SHI, Graybar, BradyPLUS, Fisher Scientific, Insight Public Sector, School Specialty, Johnson-Lancaster & Associates, Vari, Mediatechnologies and E-Z-GO/Cushman.

This new class of OPUS suppliers spans IT solutions, scientific and laboratory products, foodservice, facility maintenance, education, workplace furnishings, electrical infrastructure, and fleet management.

“Our continued investment in technology is centered on one goal: making it easier for public agencies and nonprofits to access the contracts, suppliers, and resources they need to serve their communities,” said Todd Abner, President and CEO of OMNIA Partners. “People expect purchasing to be fast, intuitive, and seamless in every part of their lives. We’re bringing that same level of simplicity to public procurement by combining an expanding portfolio of trusted agreements with technology that helps our members buy what they need more efficiently, stay compliant, and focus on serving their communities.”

Since launching in April 2024, OMNIA Partners’ member portal has fundamentally changed how government agencies, school systems and nonprofits take advantage of the benefits of cooperative purchasing. What once required days of manual research, supplier outreach, pricing comparison, and compliance verification now takes minutes. Every transaction on OPUS is completed using the same publicly solicited, competitively bid contracts used by every OMNIA Partners member – meeting the compliance requirements of most public sector organizations, dramatically reducing administrative burden. Today, nearly 40,000 public sector procurement professionals are using the platform to make purchases from more than 650 different suppliers in the OMNIA Partners network.

“OPUS has had a huge impact on making sure that we know we’re in compliance. It’s been one of the best decisions that we decided to take as a college in procurement,” said Mandy Hall, Procurement Accountant at Northwest Shoals Community College, highlighting the platform’s impact on day-to-day procurement operations.

The new suppliers that Hall and nearly 40,000 other OPUS users can purchase from directly include:

BradyPLUS – A leading specialized distributor of janitorial, sanitation, foodservice, industrial packaging, and facility maintenance products; BradyPLUS sells supplies OMNIA Partners members need to maintain cleaner, safer, and more efficient facilities. E-Z-GO/Cushman – Delivers globally recognized commercial and utility vehicles built for durability and versatility, offering material handling, personnel transport, and food and beverage solutions with flexible gas and lithium electric power options. E‑Z‑GO/Cushman provides reliable mobility and fleet solutions for campuses, municipalities, parks, and other public sector environments.Fisher Scientific – A premier supplier of laboratory equipment, scientific instruments, chemicals, diagnostics, and research consumables, Fisher Scientific expands online purchasing offerings for public sector laboratory, research, and educational institutions seeking trusted scientific products and solutions.Graybar – A leading distributor of electrical, industrial, automation and connectivity products, Graybar delivers critical infrastructure solutions that help organizations build, maintain, and modernize their facilities and technology networks.Insight Public Sector – A division of Insight Enterprises, a Fortune 500 Solutions Integrator, that helps federal, state, and local government agencies and educational institutions solve complex technology challenges. By combining the right hardware, software, and services, Insight delivers secure, end-to-end IT solutions at scale through its global network of over 6,000 technology partners.Johnson-Lancaster & Associates – A nationwide provider of foodservice equipment, supplies, and commercial kitchen project solutions, Johnson-Lancaster & Associates brings its product portfolio to the portal along with specialized expertise in commercial kitchen design, procurement, and operational support for schools and government organizations.Mediatechnologies – A manufacturer of educational and workplace furniture solutions, including casework, library furnishings, and collaborative learning environments, Mediatechnologies helps public sector buyers create functional, durable spaces tailored to their users’ needs.School Specialty – A trusted provider of educational supplies, classroom resources, learning environments, physical education, sensory and adapted learning materials, School Specialty broadens OMNIA Partners’ e-commerce catalog to give buyers access to comprehensive solutions designed to support student success and enhance educational environments.SHI – A leading IT solutions provider specializing in hardware, software, cloud, cybersecurity, AI, and technology lifecycle management, SHI brings OMNIA Partners members access to comprehensive technology solutions, including software licensing expertise and public sector-focused IT procurement support.Vari – A leading workplace furnishings and office solutions provider known for the original VariDesk®, height-adjustable standing desks, premium office seating, and other flexible workspace solutions. Buyers can quickly create productive, modern work environments with thoughtfully designed products that support employee well-being and collaboration.

In addition to adding new suppliers and products, the company has released a comprehensive suite of new platform capabilities to make purchasing goods and services faster, more intuitive, and easier to manage at scale. 

The latest OPUS release brings a redesigned user experience, and a powerful set of new capabilities built around how public sector buyers actually work. Feature enhancements include an improved search experience, seamless contract access, a centralized supplier W9 library, integrated chat support, shareable product lists among co-workers, and robust admin and approval tools.

“Our members, the people buying goods and services to keep government agencies, schools, universities and nonprofits running efficiently, are being asked to do more with less every single day,” said Josh Raymond, EVP of Marketing at OMNIA Partners. “We built our OPUS member portal to meet that challenge head-on. Adding 10 best-in-class suppliers and delivering new features and functionality requested by our members means the organizations that serve our communities can find what they need and move forward faster while meeting their regulatory requirements.”

About OPUS 

OPUS is OMNIA Partners’ free member portal, a first-of-its-kind e-commerce procurement platform available to all government agencies, school systems, higher education institutions, and nonprofits in the United States. The platform allows members to manage their OMNIA Partners account, search the company’s network of 1,200+ nationally trusted suppliers, and instantly purchase more than 8 million products — all backed by OMNIA Partners’ publicly solicited, competitively bid cooperative contracts that deliver preferred pricing, payment terms, and service levels while meeting the compliance requirements of most public sector organizations. There is no implementation or subscription cost. Learn more at omniapartners.com/solutions/opus.

About OMNIA Partners

OMNIA Partners is the nation’s largest and most experienced cooperative purchasing organization, serving public sector organizations and commercial businesses across the country. With more than $35 billion in purchasing managed each year, 600,000+ member buyers, and 1,200+ competitively awarded contracts, OMNIA Partners delivers unmatched purchasing power and strategic guidance to help organizations efficiently buy what they need. Learn more at omniapartners.com.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/omnia-partners-adds-10-new-suppliers-to-its-e-commerce-platform-and-surpasses-8-million-products-available-for-online-purchase-302819545.html

SOURCE OMNIA Partners

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Technology

Andy Hock Joins Accrete as Strategic Advisor

Published

on

By

Andy Hock, who serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Cerebras Systems, joins Accrete’s Advisory Board to help guide the company’s growth as enterprises adopt agentic AI.

NEW YORK, July 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Accrete, the cognitive infrastructure company building Knowledge Engines for autonomous work, today announced that Andy Hock, PhD, who serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Cerebras Systems, has joined Accrete’s Advisory Board to support the company’s continued product and commercial growth.

For more than a decade, AI has flourished on data, models, and compute–the raw ingredients of intelligence. As those ingredients become more abundant, another constraint emerges: the structure, context, and history of an organization’s knowledge. Legacy data organization is suitable, but not optimized for AI.

In the emergent era of agent-based AI, autonomous systems can reason, but they don’t inherit an organization’s hard-won experience, or keep it current, secure, and evolving. Encoding organizational knowledge to enable optimized agent workflows with judgement is exactly the problem that Accrete has solved since 2017.

Few people understand the frontier possibilities and constraints of AI scale better than Hock. At Cerebras, he leads product strategy behind the company’s revolutionary wafer-scale supercomputers that are breaking the speed limits of AI inference and training. Before joining Cerebras in 2017, he built AI data platforms at Google following its acquisition of Skybox Imaging, where he served as Senior Director of Advanced Technologies. He holds a PhD from UCLA.

According to Hock, “AI has moved from an emerging technology to a business imperative. As frontier compute and models become more accessible, enterprises need better ways to organize and operationalize institutional knowledge for agentic workflows, knowledge retention, learning, and AI-enabled decision-making. I’ve been impressed by what the Accrete team has quietly solved in the most demanding environments, and I’m excited to help the team deepen these capabilities for enterprise customers.”

“Andy helped build one of the industry’s leading AI infrastructure companies and brings deep experience in scaling advanced technologies from innovation to enterprise adoption,” said Prashant Bhuyan, Founder, CEO & Chairman of Accrete. “He gets what we’ve proven where the stakes are highest, in government, critical infrastructure, and highly regulated industries: expert judgement is what makes autonomous systems trustworthy, cost-efficient, and secure inside the customer’s trust boundary.”

As an advisor, Hock will counsel Accrete on product strategy, scalable autonomous systems, and go-to-market strategy required to move enterprises from copilots that assist people to autopilots that deliver the finished work.

About Andy Hock
Andy Hock, PhD, is Chief Strategy Officer at Cerebras Systems, where he leads product strategy, partnerships, and sovereign programs. He has more than 20 years of experience at the intersection of advanced algorithms, systems, and applied AI. Before Cerebras, he led AI data and geospatial products at Google following its acquisition of Skybox Imaging. He holds a PhD in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA.

About Accrete
Accrete builds cognitive infrastructure for government and enterprise customers. Founded in 2017, Accrete’s Knowledge Engine Platform unifies fragmented systems, siloed data, tacit knowledge, and decision-making into a continuously learning universal system of intelligence. Knowledge Engines give agents the shared context to reason, collaborate, decide, and act across the full complexity of an organization. As AI makes intelligence abundant, judgement is the scarce resource, and Accrete’s Knowledge Engines encode the expert judgement organizations accumulate over decades so agents can be trusted with consequential decisions. Accrete’s customers span Fortune 500 enterprises as well as U.S. defense and national security agencies. From commercial operations to national security missions, Accrete’s platform enables expert agents that deliver superintelligence purpose-built for high-stakes environments. Accrete AI Government LLC, based in Alexandria, VA, is the federal subsidiary of New York-based Accrete, Inc.

Media Contact
Dennis Yuscavitch
dennis.yuscavitch@accrete.ai
+1917-667-2523

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/andy-hock-joins-accrete-as-strategic-advisor-302819445.html

SOURCE Accrete

Continue Reading

Technology

Mr. Smokestack Joins Endura Services

Published

on

By

KANSAS CITY, Mo., July 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Endura Services announced today that Mr. Smokestack Chimney Service has joined Endura’s growing organization of chimney and hearth service companies.

Led by Jeremy Mitchell, Mr. Smokestack has built a strong reputation for quality service, customer care, and professionalism. As part of Endura, the company will continue operating with the same local team, day-to-day operations, and commitment to serving customers, while gaining access to broader support across recruiting, training, operations, marketing, technology, employee benefits, finance, safety, and growth planning.

“Jeremy and his team have built exactly the kind of company we want Endura to partner with — respected locally, serious about quality, and committed to doing right by employees and customers,” said Jerry Roche, CEO of Endura Services. “We are here to support the team and provide resources that help strong local operators continue to grow.”

“When you build and lead a business, you think about more than a transaction,” said Jeremy Mitchell. “You think about your people, your customers, your reputation, and what happens after closing. I chose Endura because their team understood that. They listened, earned my trust, and made it clear that the plan was to support Mr. Smokestack’s people and operations, not disrupt them.”

Mr. Smokestack joins other respected Endura companies, including The Mad Hatter (GA), ChimneyTek (MD), and others across the country. Each company continues to serve its local market with the benefit of additional resources, shared expertise, and a broader operating team behind it.

Endura continues to seek conversations with owners of high-quality chimney and hearth service businesses who are thinking carefully about succession, growth, and the long-term future of their teams.

About Endura Services

Formed in 2024, Endura Services is a growing chimney and hearth services organization focused on supporting strong local operating teams with the resources, systems, and professional infrastructure needed to help them grow. Endura partners with respected owners and operators who are committed to quality service, employee opportunity, customer trust, and the long-term professionalization of the chimney and hearth industry.

Contacts:

Endura Services
Joshua Isaacs
joshua.isaacs@endurapropartners.com 

Endura Services
Erik deStefanis
erik.destefanis@endurapropartners.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mr-smokestack-joins-endura-services-302819560.html

SOURCE Endura Services

Continue Reading

Technology

Portland DMA high schools and KOIN, more coverage than ever expected in 26-27, powered by uReport

Published

on

By

PORTLAND, Ore., July 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Since its recent announcement, over 60 Portland DMA schools have signed on to experience a rebirth in coverage for all school athletics and activities, with dozens more planning the onboard process. KOIN is fully funding this effort for the entire 26-27 academic year for every high school in the DMA.

“Schools will now be able to publish real-time stories about everything from marching band to all girls’ sports, to speech and debate competitions and much more. We look forward to students participating in this process and gaining incredible experiences through active journalism, media, tech and much more.” says Tom Keeler, VP & GM of KOIN Media. “All stories will be featured at KOIN.com to provide thousands more eyeballs on these great stories. A recent Seaside High School story was picked up from KOIN.com and seen on MSN, AOL and Yahoo Sports which shows the power of this partnership for schools to really shine!”

Seaside High School Golf State Champion: (Seaside Article – Featured on Yahoo

uReport has earned important recognition with 1EdTech TrustedED Apps Certification for Data Privacy. This recognition highlights uReport’s commitment to safeguarding student and educator data while providing schools with a trusted platform for storytelling, communication, and responsible AI use. This adds to uReport’s existing listing within the ISTE Learning Technology Directory (International Society for Transforming Education). 

“School leaders are paying attention to what KOIN is doing in Portland. It is special to bring back coverage to thousands of events long forgotten and to provide exposure to activities that have never experienced the limelight. Their stories need to be heard and are important to get into the community,” says Peter Fitzpatrick, CEO of DistrictWON, “The platform is best-in-class and schools can get their students involved in the coverage of everything, providing real-life experience and having lots of fun along the way. KOIN is leading the way to bring this coverage to the forefront.”

To learn more about KOIN’s plan to provide coverage see this video: KOIN – HS Coverage

School administrators can start immediately here: Easy School Account

For more information, contact uReport Director of Customer Success, Dan McGrath: 216-647-3857; dmcgrath@districtwon.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/portland-dma-high-schools-and-koin-more-coverage-than-ever-expected-in-26-27-powered-by-ureport-302819649.html

SOURCE DistrictWON

Continue Reading

Trending