Educause 2006 - Juggling Open Source and Vendor Software - Sakai & BB
Educause 2006
Dallas, Texas
Haute Software – Juggling Open Source and Vendor Software
Kim Gausepohi & Jeshua Pacifici – Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State University
They use Sakai and OSPI. - https://scholar.vt.edu/portal
Blackboard is the Enterprise System:
3,000 courses (3/4 of total)
24/7 help desk
26000 Users (students)
1600 faculty
Audience responses to why to go with vendor systems:
Dependability is #1 requirement
Stability
Data integration
Support – help des, help pages, documentation, user training
Relationship with vendor support managers
Ability to leverage your university’s technical team
Audience responses to why to go with open source:
Vendor license fee
Control over features/ functionality
$$$ can go to what you want
Long term plans and costs
Faster maturation of tools and features
Bug fixes when you need them
Community builder
For and by the university (ies)
Open source is non-proprietary code, which leads to building a tool belt.
Open source, whether you use it or not, keeps the vendors honest – so all benefit.
He told a quick story regarding their BB 6.0 conversion. Their campus was having difficulty –they were down for weeks. An enterprising student did some digging and called other institutions to find out if they were having the same problem and they were, so this added to the credibility of the university’s IT staff – the vendor was the scapegoat.
Taking on Sakai while on BB: Management Implications
Additional support for overlap
Scalability of enterprise
Cast of ten
Release cycle was faster
Lack of accountability
Runaway development
Sink or swim
Paranoia re: conversion
System engineering – new concept, new roles, new user requirements.
They used:
JIRA as a bug tracker
Confluence as the project Wiki
Strong QA effort included a team of “Scholar Fellows”, 20 faculty members as a test group. They use it first and talk it up (early adopters).
Findings:
Community can solve problems faster than the vendor.
If you aren’t ready, don’t release – be patient and wait until pieces are ready.
Upgrades are conversions.
Rename the product – their version of Sakai is Scholar (https://scholar.vt.edu/portal)
Concerns:
Migration
It’s not free; Open-source 'is free like a puppy is free'. (Originally from Sun chief executive.)
Transitioning users – understanding their fears
– ease of use
– stability and reliability
Part of being new is the stress on support: 10 new users to a new system = 25000 on a known, reliable system.
Dallas, Texas
Haute Software – Juggling Open Source and Vendor Software
Kim Gausepohi & Jeshua Pacifici – Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State University
They use Sakai and OSPI. - https://scholar.vt.edu/portal
Blackboard is the Enterprise System:
3,000 courses (3/4 of total)
24/7 help desk
26000 Users (students)
1600 faculty
Audience responses to why to go with vendor systems:
Dependability is #1 requirement
Stability
Data integration
Support – help des, help pages, documentation, user training
Relationship with vendor support managers
Ability to leverage your university’s technical team
Audience responses to why to go with open source:
Vendor license fee
Control over features/ functionality
$$$ can go to what you want
Long term plans and costs
Faster maturation of tools and features
Bug fixes when you need them
Community builder
For and by the university (ies)
Open source is non-proprietary code, which leads to building a tool belt.
Open source, whether you use it or not, keeps the vendors honest – so all benefit.
He told a quick story regarding their BB 6.0 conversion. Their campus was having difficulty –they were down for weeks. An enterprising student did some digging and called other institutions to find out if they were having the same problem and they were, so this added to the credibility of the university’s IT staff – the vendor was the scapegoat.
Taking on Sakai while on BB: Management Implications
Additional support for overlap
Scalability of enterprise
Cast of ten
Release cycle was faster
Lack of accountability
Runaway development
Sink or swim
Paranoia re: conversion
System engineering – new concept, new roles, new user requirements.
They used:
JIRA as a bug tracker
Confluence as the project Wiki
Strong QA effort included a team of “Scholar Fellows”, 20 faculty members as a test group. They use it first and talk it up (early adopters).
Findings:
Community can solve problems faster than the vendor.
If you aren’t ready, don’t release – be patient and wait until pieces are ready.
Upgrades are conversions.
Rename the product – their version of Sakai is Scholar (https://scholar.vt.edu/portal)
Concerns:
Migration
It’s not free; Open-source 'is free like a puppy is free'. (Originally from Sun chief executive.)
Transitioning users – understanding their fears
– ease of use
– stability and reliability
Part of being new is the stress on support: 10 new users to a new system = 25000 on a known, reliable system.
posted by Kathleen Willbanks at
3:59 PM
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