The Iceberg Effect

The launch of EdUnify is just around the corner. The beta is scheduled to go live mid October 2010 at EDUCAUSE. Our goal has been to study and assess the means to develop and support an education industry centered repository of electronic services that could be used by developers, software implementers and architects to connect, bridge, reuse and leverage web services – which we believe will lower operational costs and improve interoperability across the pieces.

In doing so, we (the PESC community http://www.pesc.org/ and supporters) believe the process of collecting, annotating and referring to a public repository of known electronic services – or providing the means for the development of new services - will help harmonize how data and process trading partners can work together to lower the threshold of achieving interoperability through abstraction and common protocols. It is a monster initiative with many subtle assumptions and inferences.

As we have explored the issues around web service adoption during the EdUnify Task Force meetings and conference calls, SOA (service oriented architecture) and the common data elements used in transaction development marshaled by organizations like PESC, I have come to realize the vast size of information technologies already invested and sitting beneath the surface of IT infrastructures everywhere - at least spread across the US education providers - is approximately $2.6 trillion - $1 trillion in postsecondary education alone. That is a hefty chunk of ice.

We could debate the size and how I calculated it. But, that is not the point of this post. Let's assume or agree, there is a huge investment already in place - what many call legacy systems spread across the thousands of postsecondary institutions and the thousands of schools, districts and support organizations across America all trying to improve educational delivery, access, completion and outcomes. If you are interesting in discussing how I came to this number, please contact me. I would be glad to share the algorithm and sources of data.

The premise of why EdUnify is so important - in my view - is that we will need a means to bridge the IT infrastructures, applications and new tools as we shift our energies from standalone business perspectives to how our services and offerings connect to the rest of the ecosystem. Like people, we are seeing the impact of the internet – or the network effect on organizations. Connecting enables collaborations, sharing and using the cloud as a new social and economic environment that brings us out of our autonomous systems. Feedback, walls, posts, pokes, and such other interchanges are just the surface of what is to become of information systems in the 21st century as we transition to serve the connected world.

So, my suggestion and push to move on EdUnify was born from the perspective we need a means to work together - even competitors - in a common sandbox that will protect out investments in IT, while it allows us to connect with one another through defined interfaces - what I am also calling electronic services - ak web services. The sandbox would have defined interfaces that could be public or private. But, the concept would be to help us partner technologies and applications together to foster the connectivity organizations will be striving for as they attempt to participate in the 21st century global economy.

Many legacy systems were revised or re-tooled during the Y2K crisis just a decade ago. I can remember the anxiety and I am sure you can as well. All my electronic devices and applications were impacted pre 2000. Each individual or organization was responsible for their own systems. It was a MASS migration of sorts impacting our home, work and play. Since Y2K, my estimate is we have spent another $500 Billion to support the IT investment across a complex array of applications and infrastructures deployed throughout the education ecosystem.

Most of the solutions were implemented and deployed on the basis they would bring great efficiencies and greater service to the organization employing the technology - all born from the fear of how date values were stored - shifting the emphasis and impact on business rules that required sorted dates. Still others were replaced with new systems promising further productivity improvements across thousands of touch points or functions shared in large departmentally driven systems. Others were just patched to get by to avoid disruption in service and further investment.

The iceberg effect - which I am calling the gross accumulation of application invested and their slow moving path, reflects the accumulation of applications over time across the education ecosystem. The migration path - shifting technology base from standalone or discrete applications to the internet is under the surface - only showing off a tip of what is really going on. Moving the IT infrastructures in any direction is like an iceberg as well. So much of the bulk is under the surface and out of sight. And, the general movement is in measured in inches moved – not miles. I think many oversimplify and miss-judge the efforts underlying the IT investment because of the iceberg effect.

We take great pride in our knowledge workers who have unique know-how learned through experiences working with the applications and sophisticated data models employed for decades. They know so much about their applications and so little about the iceberg they are attached too. This further makes steering the IT infrastructure - which we are all apart of - so difficult and costly. This brings me to the scarcity of knowledge underlying the iceberg effect and how individuals and organizations are following natural instincts to protect the knowledge to maintain its value.

A single vendor's constructs work together very well because they have links built-in and employed to make the applications easy to use. Departmental experts love the engineering effort expended by vendors, authors or implementers because it helps them do their jobs easier. No one wants a harder job after implementing technology. But, the systems and applications developed and deployed to serve departmental experts are stuck together like ice cubes exposed to the sun light slowly melting. They stick together as the energy is released.

The best systems are those with the proprietary approaches that have evolved to serve the functional needs - by differentiating how the IT applications work together and provide the benefits promised by the IT Investment. Thus, the resistance shifting to public or open standards suggested by groups like PESC, the Data Quality Campaign or others is in direct competition with the drivers (or business models) that led to the adoption and investment in the applications making up the iceberg effect currently impacting hundreds of thousands of servers, databases and applications constructed to automated academic, research and administrative functions supporting the learning enterprises.

Like an iceberg, frozen under the surface, we can either live with the way it is, or begin to melt the iceberg by heating the water surrounding it. Heating the water is like the market influences drawn by stakeholders seeking to collaborate with shared technologies, bridging their IT systems to share data and processes that have been frozen stuck by independent efforts and the ice buildup over time shielding the level of effort.

Yet, to elevate the temperature just a few degrees, takes a lot of energy. That sort of sums up where we are at this stage before we launch EdUnify – we are trying to help organizations and individuals understand the evolution of where systems and infrastructures are heading as we continue to see connectivity and collaboration grow. The PESC EdUnify Task Force has been very successful in accumulating support for the project. Now, the big question is, can we get the support and community to begin to chisel away at the iceberg effect to foster the goals of interoperability and transparency needed by the industry to serve learning enterprises in the 21st century as they transition from standalone to network contributors. That is the big question in my mind now.