Is there a trend toward
integrated learning and administrative systems supported by a
single vendor, best of breed products from multiple vendors, open
source, or a combination? What are the key interoperability
points for either scenario (between what systems and
applications)?
"Five or ten years ago, when there weren't
that many good integration standards, I think it was important to
try and go with a single stack that gave you everything," Feng
said. "As integration standards evolved, however, that has opened
up the option for people to be able to mix and match
applications. And while we may not be all the way there yet, I
think we're definitely on that path. At Oracle, that's been our
strategy, to make sure we're enabling the ability for customers
to not have to buy everything from us. Wherever possible, we
don't want to have proprietary APIs. We want to use
standards-based APIs. And where other standards already exist,
our strategy is to join up with other vendors and promote the
standards in that area."
Leonhardt joked that often during his
career, his institution made "worst-of-breed" decisions. Since
many one-off decisions were made for functional and non-technical
reasons, they ended up with numerous operating systems and
databases that often were not compatible. He believes individual
institutions need to make rational decisions about standards for
their own infrastructures. In terms of the functionality that
their own end users and customers see, Leonhardt said nobody
cares about where or what the institutions are running.
Therefore, he thinks all of the available options--open source,
vendor provided solutions, or SaaS, for example--make sense, all
for different reasons. A key integration point for him is
standards and identity management using federation
technology.
Fontaine agreed that because there is so
much diversity and integration today in the world of technology,
it would be very hard to see a consolidation down to a single
vendor. And between the different systems, there are such unique
business requirements and buyers, he does not think faculty care
as much about the systems purchased as they do the course
management systems or platforms used on their campuses.
Blackboard, for example, has organized its business around three
different verticals: one focused on their teaching and learning
platform, another on their facilities platform, and a third
focused on their mass notification platform. "Each of those areas
are undergoing so much growth in the nation, it's very hard to
foresee in the short term consolidation down to a single vendor.
We're seeing increased need on campus to provide different
environments to different constituencies."
Vendor-supported open source solutions is a
trend Moon believes higher education is going to see in the
future. "And we've got to think, as we've been saying, beyond the
firewall. Not just applications that you bring in-house, but
there are going to be all kinds of applications out there that
people are going to be plugging into. The choices are exploding
and, as a result of that, governance becomes critical."
One member of the audience said that
whenever institutions are confronted with the big-picture
multiple choice questions, the process is designed to be
fundamentally suspicious. He believes that institutions in that
position should "refuse to choose" and the way they do that is by
demanding standards. "The way that universities are going to
refuse to choose is by demanding that their vendors and their
open source products have meaningful participation in
standards-setting groups like IMS Global. Are they serving on the
committees? And if they are, are they implementing standards? If
they are, are they testing the standards against other
integration products? If those tests don't work, are they taking
the responsibility of coming back to the body and fixing those
standards? If they're not getting those answers from their
vendors, then they are probably more ill-served than they
realize."
