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Open Source Technology Update
Breaking Away
4/1/2007
“Open source should not be about bashing the commercial software vendors,” says Lyons; “there’s an ongoing place in the market for them. The open source movement is more about design: Not only are these new applications designed for and by people in higher education; there will be hundreds and hundreds of new eyes looking at the code and the capabilities to ensure we’re meeting users’ needs.”
Still, moving to open source has its risks. When commercial software hits a bump, universities can turn to software suppliers for emergency service and support. If an open source code base fails, it can be difficult to track down the specific developer who can find and fix software bugs. In truth, moving to Sakai was “definitely a bit of a leap of faith,” Osterman concedes. “We decided to do a oneyear pilot. If it didn’t work out, we agreed we’d go back to the drawing board and start over.”
Whitman College launched its pilot in the fall of 2005. The effort included a gap analysis project that identified core Blackboard-type capabilities that the open source system would need to support. The university included 10 faculty members in the pilot’s first semester, then expanded it to 16 faculty members in the second semester. “We wanted to keep it fairly low-profile and make sure each of the individual testers bought into the project,” says Osterman.
Smart move: Thanks to faculty testing and feedback, Whitman College was able to move CLEo into a production environment in the fall of 2006. Osterman says the system offers three clear benefits:
- Code transparency—an IT environment that’s truly open for enhancement without any need to negotiate with vendors.
- International reach. The CLEo project helped Whitman College to work more closely with leading institutions worldwide.
- Surprisingly strong reliability. Since larger institutions tested and deployed Sakai slightly ahead of Whitman College, Osterman’s team gained the benefit of their reliability work.
History Lesson
This journey to open source would have been unimaginable even a few years ago. For decades, universities have relied on completely homegrown information systems or complex commercial software to run their financial, academic, and development operations. But ERP and other commercial applications were frequently horizontal by design, and lacked deep vertical features written specifically for higher ed. Often, universities had to pay vendors extra fees for custom modules that assisted student recruitment, enrollment, and campus services. Even at a small college with fewer than 10,000 students, annual license and maintenance fees can cost $100,000 or more. “That’s a lot of money for bug fixes that should have been corrected before the products even shipped,” quips Ed Golod, president of Revenue Accelerators, New York-based technology consultants.
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