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Features
Special Report: Open Source Vision
6/26/2006
Increasingly, colleges and universities are turning to open source as a way to meet their technology infrastructure and application needs. It’s time to weigh the benefits—and the challenges.
'Open source gave us a
flexible, single sign-on
portal
solution at about one-half
the cost of
purchasing the
technology from a vendor.'
-Christian Boniforti, Lynn University
Open source has changed everything about student computing at Lynn University in Boca Raton, FL. Over the last few years, when students wanted to utilize mission-critical systems, they had to log in to separate systems to access basic functions such as e-mail, course registration, and financial aid. Students couldn’t toggle from one application to another; to switch, they had to log out of one and log in to the next. The progress was both tedious and time-consuming. By 2005, technology officials knew they had put up with the situation for far too long. The time had come to find a solution.
The hunt for that solution began that year. Fed up with inefficiencies in the way the disparate portal sites were linked, CIO Christian Boniforti set out to centralize all student-oriented systems within a unique portal, and establish a single sign-on feature that would enable students to log in once and have access to everything they needed. Boniforti investigated portal applications from a number of different vendors, including Blackboard and Jenzabar. In the end, however, he opted for uPortal, an open source application built and designed centrally by JA-SIG, a federation of higher education institutions interested in open source (see “Advocating Glasnost”), but maintained locally by Lynn’s IT department. “When we started looking at offthe- shelf applications, the cost raised red flags,” he says, noting that the small liberal arts school could not afford six-figure solutions to solve its portal w'es. “That’s when we discovered open source.”
Taking full advantage of the customizable nature of the open source uPortal application, technologists at Lynn took a couple of months and created the school’s new Intranet site MyLynn, combining all student functions within one easy-to-access portal. Looking back, Boniforti estimates that by utilizing an open source solution, the university probably saved up to one-half of what it would have spent on the technology had it been purchased from a vendor. What’s more, he notes that the system is so flexible, his teams have been able to add new functions and features every couple of weeks, always introducing something new.
Denison University (OH) is another institution that has embraced uPortal, and Scott Siddall, the assistant provost and director of instructional technology there, says the decision was easy, considering that the previous method of piecing together different solutions from different vendors was inefficient and time-consuming, not to mention expensive. “Lots of schools looked at us when we started with uPortal and said, ‘How are you doing that?’ But we demonstrated that you didn’t need to have deep skills in a tech area in order to use the application,” says Siddall. “We still are ducking the issue of having to have exotic Java programming skills to develop portlets for our portal. So far, so good.”
It’s no secret that in the open environment of academia, open source applications can have a dramatic impact, streamlining and unifying a network infrastructure. And while most open source technologies are not “perfected” (and which technologies are?), they can offer lower-cost alternatives to pricier vendor offerings, while improving the ability for technologists to control their networks. Importantly, they also can bolster security as systems become more unified (less disparate) and entry points are reduced. As open source technology becomes more and more prevalent and sophisticated, colleges and universities increasingly are turning to such solutions to meet their needs. Still, if you’re considering or evaluating such a move for your own institution, you’ll need plenty of background information to weigh the pros and cons.
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