Who is interested in helping reduce the “incompatibles” across the education industry that is contributing to confusion, frustration and inefficiency for learners? I am sure if you were asked, you would voice your support to improve the connections throughout our education system and the linkages to support better advising, assessment, course planning and attention to alerts. There is a throng of people and the organizations voicing the need for shared data definitions, improved automated tools and collaborative efforts which would support more effective use of data measures inside and outside the classroom. Is it all talk? Or, are the initiatives underway that could offer promise to support learners in this internet age and the knowledge economy?
A big part of the challenge to guide learners across boundaries and policies rests on the incompatibilities between Student Information Systems, Degree Audit Systems, Course Management Systems and Advising Systems that are implemented by institutions, states and even regions trying to serve learners with good information, checklists and action plans. The education industry has billions invested in software and data systems - and spends billions annually in the care and feeding of technology to support them.
Here we are near the end of 2010, and we are struggling to convince software developers and implementers the need to publish their application programming interfaces or web services. There are many applications implemented across institutions supported by hundreds of software organizations for profit and non-profit nationwide. And, most are still not aware of the initiatives to push data and process standards along to help foster greater harmonization of electronic services. Part of the challenge many believe is that we are in a holding pattern waiting for a single thread or shift to reveal one way of achieving compatibility – by a one-size-fits all standard that everyone follows. That won’t happen.
In October, PESC launched EdUnify at the annual EDUCAUSE conference. EdUnify is up and running (https://demo.edunify.pesc.org). It is a registry of web services and web applications. It is free to use. Yet, it is not a standard. It is a repository to help the industry annotate what system interfaces and processes can be inventoried to help our communities work together voluntarily. Software developers and implementers can freely advertise their electronic services, specifications and links to documentation. Institutions can also publish their use of those services and annotate by keywords to allow for other developers to search and connect with the services respecting the authentication, security and license information posted.
As I continue to evangelize for EdUnify and the development of logical web services to bridge data systems of all forms, most of the community that should be involved continues to stay on the side line watching instead of getting into the game. What do I mean? Well, anyone who acquires or implements software applications today should be concerned with how the system provides out of the box integration support. When we buy a new LED TV or computer for example, we expect the standard connections provided will adhere to industry accepted methods. Otherwise, we have to buy additional converters, cables and hardware to transform our signals.
Some software developers are hiding behind their firewalls so to speak, waiting for their clients to pressure them to open up their data systems and begin aligning with the emerging national standards which we can debate. Some developers just are not ready. Others are engaging services wrapped in proprietary methods to bridge the integration problems and passing the costs on to their users through expensive consulting contracts or interfaces. It is a pretty nasty problem trying to remove the incompatibilities that is contributing to the lack of progress in improving the utilization of resources focused on degree completion. It is an economic problem. Scarcity of IT knowledge is desired by those that control the data systems because they make more with it than without it. What they fail to see or believe is they could make better applications and offer greater utility with open data systems than with closed ones.
Our decentralized education system conceived around institutional autonomy and academic freedom has resulted in the unintended consequences most discount as the “leaky faucet” in the supply chain or pipeline. Learners “flow” through K12, postsecondary education and into the workforce in fits of starts and stops as they manage day to day life circumstances. Many policy makers are attempting to stimulate changes in how educational organizations and government agencies work together to tighten up the joints, so to speak.
We seek collaboration in many ways. This takes real data -- measured and reported to reveal gaps and cracks invisible to the naked eye. It also takes sharing and collaboration. With varying means of defining, using and exchanging data and processes across institutions, the learner is left walking paper between stopovers complicating and duplicating the level of effort to serve them. Thus, we have billions of dollars wasted in our education system because the education industry can’t face the conceit of those in control of data. We can’t begin to improve the services to learners, if we can’t fit the pipes along the pipeline together better. It is not really a technical issue, but one of will power, leadership and direction.
No wonder the learner experience is complicated and problematic. The challenge to help learners span boundaries and policies impacting dual enrollment, transfer articulation, academic assessment, progress and factors impacting completion are actually made worse by the software data systems implemented under the guise of improving retention and navigation, when all they can really do is serve the promise with band aids and bubble gum trying to link proprietary systems together with email and web 2.0 like technologies with ‘static’ mash-ups, PDF’s or custom FLASH that are not sustainable.
The funding projections for education are gloomy as enrollment trends will continue to shift and the online world disrupts content delivery methods. If we think the flush of funds coming from government and foundations grants will continue to serve initiatives in a few years, we are fooling ourselves. The call to action is not as loud as Y2K a decade ago. Because of incompatibility with dates, we spent billions to remake one field type. Here we are ten years later, still struggling to deliver on the promise of technology, and we lack the incentives to publish API’s and web services to foster a new generation of applications and tools that will address 21st learning. New composite applications will need data and process bridges across the current landscape of student systems no doubt. Today, many are spent band-aiding the touch points with duck tape and chewing gum.
The real visionaries and leaders in our industry will see the need for open systems. They won’t give up because the externalities impede them or are ignored. We (software developers in general) created this problem. The next generation of learning tools will have to be open - with plug and play connectors such as web services that are open and extendable. Expect them. Ask for them. Don’t make them an afterthought. And, if you are in the business of developing software or implementing data systems, join EdUnify now and begin working on open data systems and solutions that will reduce the costs, improve services to learners and accelerate development. Search the registry. Link to it. Share it with others. It is time you ask your software teams to utilize EdUnify and publish their web services to enable collaboration, team work and new data partnerships that will improve interoperability through market incentives.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, December 18, 2009
PESC EdUnify Task Force Launched
Summary
On December 17th and 18th, about 30 PESC members and interested parties gathered in Washington DC to launch the PESC EdUnify Task Force. Representatives from all sectors were engaged as we discussed the business and technical challenges to launch such an initiaitve. I am most thankful for Steve Wheat from Emory and Ed Hauser from SunGard Higher Education as project chairs. And, Michael Sessa for making all the arrangements. Our breakout sessions were very productive and the volunteers to continue working on the use cases was fantastic. Next up, we will be sending out an annoucement inviting interested parties to participate in the Proof of Concept (POC). We anticipate having a conference call in January 2010 after the holidays. Meanwhile, Ed, Steve, Michael and I will continue having our weekly friday calls preparing and orchestrating the next steps of the Task Force.
Business Discussion
Presently it is hard to access data across higher education. Data interchange standards are not widely implemented by vendors, academic institutions, and government agencies. Where standards are implemented they are not registered or documented in an infrastructure that allows them to be readily used by people building integrations and looking for data. EdUnify infrastructure will allow vendors, academic institutions, and government agencies to register their data interchange specifications and implementations and map them to standard termininology for interoperability. Users of EdUnify will be able to use this registry and vocabulary services to build integrations, inventory services, and access data across higher education. PESC is the right organization to undertake this effort, because it is a neutral party with a track record of success in developing and implementing standards.
My intention is to stimulate discussion by putting some thoughts together that some may feel are provacative. I have done this on purpose, because as stakeholders across education, we often get lost in our own self interests and lose focus on helping students succeed. That is not a one time event or, in most cases, a period of time spent at one institution. Students span institutions and the enrollment implications impose requirements on data stores and systems not contemplated by current technologies.
The motivation to control's one destiny is emboddied in how every organization priorities, invests and leverages the investment in information technologies. Every organization has their own proprietary interests reflected in their desire to sustain and grow their business, either for profit or driven by mission to serve their community of interests. Which, on the surface sounds selfish, but is realistic.
Integration and interface technologies are haunted by incompatibities. Data stores, a key asset within information systems are built limiting scope and resources. As such, integration and interface technologies are usually left off the requirements list. As a backdrop, we also must consider how we generally drive our actions as noncomformists and don't like to be told how to do something, when to do it and what to do. So, we often do it our way. The not invented here syndrome often followed across education rears its head when system decisions are made based upon subtle inferences that solutions often don't exactly fit requirements, thus justifying developing alternatives or customizing systems so they loose their compatability. The difficult challenge to address the benefits of sharing data and methods across applications highlights the costly potholes as we travel along the road. It requires us to think out side the box. How can we overcome the natural and human proprietary leanings and aversions to sharing? The potholes are everywhere.
In school, we would penalize a student for cheating if they copied off a peer. It saves them work obviously. We are socialized to think it is bad and we would penalize students severely for any infraction. In business, in general, it is reflected everyday in how we look to each other to see insights and to validate our thinking. We often realize it is a compliment that someone copies one's work on one level, but also how our competitive spirit would naturally hide our proprietary interests, ideas and property to avoid the public and the risk of copy. The internet and web reveals how easy it is to copy content, pictures and we rationalize it by how much time it saves us, how it improves how we can make our powerpoints leap out from the screen or how we can leverage the knowledge we gain access to because someone else posts and maintains it.
Governments attempt to help address these issues through patent and copyright registration. Which, as an example of a registry and lookup, shows that even having the ability to register one's intellectual property, the resistance, extra effort and costs to do so, reduces the effectiveness of patent and copyright protection because the information becomes public allowing others to copy or mimic. The difference though is the IP in the case of the EdUnify Registry and Lookup is not made public. Only the front door or window is available for public view. The actual IP behind the walls is still not exposed. Whereas in the case of Copyright and Patent registration, the actual documents are stored and made available.
Yet, the business reasons why organizations and people in general hide and protect the investments in information technologies is reinforced by the fears and anxieties of competition and misstrust that things will be copied. Why should we expose the front door or address to our proprietary technology so others can see them? Proprietary data and application services are often strategic and tactical competitive advantages. And, thus attempting to persuade an organization, managed by people, to publish what they consider their IP is doomed to fail if we attempt to force compliance or rule. Still, EdUnify is not collecting and publishing IP. It is just collecting and providing a directory of services offered like a phone book lists telephone numbers and street addresses. The actual details of the services (what is located at the address) are described to allow query and search, but the guts of how a method call works and what it provides (the value) is abstracted by the web service, protecting the actual IP and effort invested in the technology.
Exposing connections also offers the opportunties to drive business and value we can't see today. What do I mean? The internet, like other major revolutionary ideas has created new markets and approaches to business we never would have dreamed of just a few short years ago. Who would have thought someone would be interested in Tweating or Digging? Who would have thought Facebook would have captured such a huge population of users exposing, poking and messaging? Who would have thought wiki's and blogs would be used to support collabortive processes like EdUnify and enabling us all to be publishers and consumers of our ideas?
This is why we need to develop and reinforce a market driven approach, which will leverage why people and organizations will allow for reuse, copy and sharing of practices, automated services and common data defintions. Doing so has to be in their proprietary interests. Trying to force it or expect it will never happen. Yet, similar to movements of open source and shareware, one has to think about the potential outside the interface points. The interface points are connections, and like connecting cities with roads or websites with links, the connections offer value. Connections between governments or between communities are hard to do, because they must deal with the natural byproduct of the effort we put forth to differentiate and be the best. No one wants to be the worst or last on the list. So, we must leverage the competitive spirit in all of us.
In banking, the ATM network allows consumers to connect to their bank anywhere in the world. On the web, Amazon allows a consumer to connect to many sellers of the same product competing on price, service and delivery. In music, musicans post music tracks for free to allow consumers to sample thru iTunes or other outlets. Comcast OnDemand provides free and for fee movies. Photo repositoies offer free and for fee pictures with various options to deliver their value. Credit cards allow consumers to post a charge and pay later. The fee to pay over time versus pay by due is their business model.
In transportation, air, car, train, boats, bikes, and walking offers the means to get from point A to point B with different benefits of speed, energy and price. The point is, connections bring value and expose new ways to bring value to consumers. EdUnify is not the connection or the service or the data delivered by a service. It is only the means to register and find connections. Which then says, if you have a connection that brings value, which one would assume some will have and others won't, why not advertise it and promote it?
If one would build a website and had no one visit it, I would guess you would think that would be silly and a waste of effort. Why do it? But, if one advertised it and drove traffic to it, one would expect the reasons motivated to expose information about one's beliefs, mission, products, services, etc. are driven by commercial or personal reaons. These drivers reflect the natural reasons why all organizations developing information systems and services will eventually utilize the registry and lookup to promote and access data and method connections that are obscured today. EdUnify is a channel like the website domain does for holder enabling the publication of information that will drive business. Business is what this is all about.
Come join the effort to unify access to data and methods across education to help students succeed. EdUnify is simply a registry and lookup service, publishing the entry door to electronic services. As such, the data and methods are under the control of who offers the service, reinforcing practices and policies established. Please checkout http://www.pesc.org/ for more information or to join the Task Force.
On December 17th and 18th, about 30 PESC members and interested parties gathered in Washington DC to launch the PESC EdUnify Task Force. Representatives from all sectors were engaged as we discussed the business and technical challenges to launch such an initiaitve. I am most thankful for Steve Wheat from Emory and Ed Hauser from SunGard Higher Education as project chairs. And, Michael Sessa for making all the arrangements. Our breakout sessions were very productive and the volunteers to continue working on the use cases was fantastic. Next up, we will be sending out an annoucement inviting interested parties to participate in the Proof of Concept (POC). We anticipate having a conference call in January 2010 after the holidays. Meanwhile, Ed, Steve, Michael and I will continue having our weekly friday calls preparing and orchestrating the next steps of the Task Force.
Business Discussion
Presently it is hard to access data across higher education. Data interchange standards are not widely implemented by vendors, academic institutions, and government agencies. Where standards are implemented they are not registered or documented in an infrastructure that allows them to be readily used by people building integrations and looking for data. EdUnify infrastructure will allow vendors, academic institutions, and government agencies to register their data interchange specifications and implementations and map them to standard termininology for interoperability. Users of EdUnify will be able to use this registry and vocabulary services to build integrations, inventory services, and access data across higher education. PESC is the right organization to undertake this effort, because it is a neutral party with a track record of success in developing and implementing standards.
My intention is to stimulate discussion by putting some thoughts together that some may feel are provacative. I have done this on purpose, because as stakeholders across education, we often get lost in our own self interests and lose focus on helping students succeed. That is not a one time event or, in most cases, a period of time spent at one institution. Students span institutions and the enrollment implications impose requirements on data stores and systems not contemplated by current technologies.
The motivation to control's one destiny is emboddied in how every organization priorities, invests and leverages the investment in information technologies. Every organization has their own proprietary interests reflected in their desire to sustain and grow their business, either for profit or driven by mission to serve their community of interests. Which, on the surface sounds selfish, but is realistic.
Integration and interface technologies are haunted by incompatibities. Data stores, a key asset within information systems are built limiting scope and resources. As such, integration and interface technologies are usually left off the requirements list. As a backdrop, we also must consider how we generally drive our actions as noncomformists and don't like to be told how to do something, when to do it and what to do. So, we often do it our way. The not invented here syndrome often followed across education rears its head when system decisions are made based upon subtle inferences that solutions often don't exactly fit requirements, thus justifying developing alternatives or customizing systems so they loose their compatability. The difficult challenge to address the benefits of sharing data and methods across applications highlights the costly potholes as we travel along the road. It requires us to think out side the box. How can we overcome the natural and human proprietary leanings and aversions to sharing? The potholes are everywhere.
In school, we would penalize a student for cheating if they copied off a peer. It saves them work obviously. We are socialized to think it is bad and we would penalize students severely for any infraction. In business, in general, it is reflected everyday in how we look to each other to see insights and to validate our thinking. We often realize it is a compliment that someone copies one's work on one level, but also how our competitive spirit would naturally hide our proprietary interests, ideas and property to avoid the public and the risk of copy. The internet and web reveals how easy it is to copy content, pictures and we rationalize it by how much time it saves us, how it improves how we can make our powerpoints leap out from the screen or how we can leverage the knowledge we gain access to because someone else posts and maintains it.
Governments attempt to help address these issues through patent and copyright registration. Which, as an example of a registry and lookup, shows that even having the ability to register one's intellectual property, the resistance, extra effort and costs to do so, reduces the effectiveness of patent and copyright protection because the information becomes public allowing others to copy or mimic. The difference though is the IP in the case of the EdUnify Registry and Lookup is not made public. Only the front door or window is available for public view. The actual IP behind the walls is still not exposed. Whereas in the case of Copyright and Patent registration, the actual documents are stored and made available.
Yet, the business reasons why organizations and people in general hide and protect the investments in information technologies is reinforced by the fears and anxieties of competition and misstrust that things will be copied. Why should we expose the front door or address to our proprietary technology so others can see them? Proprietary data and application services are often strategic and tactical competitive advantages. And, thus attempting to persuade an organization, managed by people, to publish what they consider their IP is doomed to fail if we attempt to force compliance or rule. Still, EdUnify is not collecting and publishing IP. It is just collecting and providing a directory of services offered like a phone book lists telephone numbers and street addresses. The actual details of the services (what is located at the address) are described to allow query and search, but the guts of how a method call works and what it provides (the value) is abstracted by the web service, protecting the actual IP and effort invested in the technology.
Exposing connections also offers the opportunties to drive business and value we can't see today. What do I mean? The internet, like other major revolutionary ideas has created new markets and approaches to business we never would have dreamed of just a few short years ago. Who would have thought someone would be interested in Tweating or Digging? Who would have thought Facebook would have captured such a huge population of users exposing, poking and messaging? Who would have thought wiki's and blogs would be used to support collabortive processes like EdUnify and enabling us all to be publishers and consumers of our ideas?
This is why we need to develop and reinforce a market driven approach, which will leverage why people and organizations will allow for reuse, copy and sharing of practices, automated services and common data defintions. Doing so has to be in their proprietary interests. Trying to force it or expect it will never happen. Yet, similar to movements of open source and shareware, one has to think about the potential outside the interface points. The interface points are connections, and like connecting cities with roads or websites with links, the connections offer value. Connections between governments or between communities are hard to do, because they must deal with the natural byproduct of the effort we put forth to differentiate and be the best. No one wants to be the worst or last on the list. So, we must leverage the competitive spirit in all of us.
In banking, the ATM network allows consumers to connect to their bank anywhere in the world. On the web, Amazon allows a consumer to connect to many sellers of the same product competing on price, service and delivery. In music, musicans post music tracks for free to allow consumers to sample thru iTunes or other outlets. Comcast OnDemand provides free and for fee movies. Photo repositoies offer free and for fee pictures with various options to deliver their value. Credit cards allow consumers to post a charge and pay later. The fee to pay over time versus pay by due is their business model.
In transportation, air, car, train, boats, bikes, and walking offers the means to get from point A to point B with different benefits of speed, energy and price. The point is, connections bring value and expose new ways to bring value to consumers. EdUnify is not the connection or the service or the data delivered by a service. It is only the means to register and find connections. Which then says, if you have a connection that brings value, which one would assume some will have and others won't, why not advertise it and promote it?
If one would build a website and had no one visit it, I would guess you would think that would be silly and a waste of effort. Why do it? But, if one advertised it and drove traffic to it, one would expect the reasons motivated to expose information about one's beliefs, mission, products, services, etc. are driven by commercial or personal reaons. These drivers reflect the natural reasons why all organizations developing information systems and services will eventually utilize the registry and lookup to promote and access data and method connections that are obscured today. EdUnify is a channel like the website domain does for holder enabling the publication of information that will drive business. Business is what this is all about.
Come join the effort to unify access to data and methods across education to help students succeed. EdUnify is simply a registry and lookup service, publishing the entry door to electronic services. As such, the data and methods are under the control of who offers the service, reinforcing practices and policies established. Please checkout http://www.pesc.org/ for more information or to join the Task Force.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Doing the Right Thing: Facing Externalities Head On
Externalities are the costs or benefits that impact society but are not included in the market price of a good or service. It is an economic term used to describe the residual impact of commerce. Specialization, motivated by self interests, creates externalities by the actions taken to produce and consume in a market driven economy. That is, organizations and individuals are drawn to specialize and concentrate effort in line with their self interests as they produce and trade with other parties monetized by the utility of products and services.
Industry focuses resources to maximize profit within a market driven economy. Governments tend to cover the societal implications of commerce or the lack thereof. Institutions, or generally any organization deemed to provide educational training and credentials, focus on sustainability and mission as they serve their communities or markets. The pendulum swings between freedom and regulation (whether through self-regulating or mandatory laws enacted) controlling the implications of responsibility.
Our orientation to and expectation of government evolves from these implications. The social and democratic perspectives of fairness, goodwill, safety and freewill pull and push to an unbalanced state similar to a Monopoly game where winner takes all. The loser walks away empty handed. Fairness is not in the cards.
Balancing motives and return is difficult in the competitive real world, even with shared values. The engine of our economy needs a carburetor to mix the right balance of fuel (what goes in), work (what comes out) and waste (the residuals unused) – which then has to be buffered by mufflers and exhaust systems to minimize the impact on the environment and our health. Think of the evolution of the automobile industry and its many changes since the first innovation brought the value of faster horses to the market. Producers and consumers made adjustments as the value/benefit/cost shifted and as we learned more about the impact of the automobile on our world. Think about the role governments played in the evolution of the automobile industry, from requiring gas mileage disclosure to bumper safety. And, think about how the industry banded together to fight against moves to regulate or require social responsibility.
Government generally focuses on what is the common good, depending on perspective, policy and orientation. What falls within or outside one’s commercial area of focus is external. Pollution is an example of a negative externality. Smoking and the impact of health is another. Driving while intoxicated is an externality created by the selling and consumption of alcohol. Global warming is another. Agriculture and planting stimulate the production of oxygen and the reduction of CO2. Education is an example of an externality benefit when members of society other than the students themselves benefit from a more educated population.
Government-sponsored educational organizations, influenced by industry to train and prepare people across our society for the work force, are the foundation of our growing economy. Most would agree the collaboration between government and industry is aligned to foster what is often called human capital in a state, region, or country.
Capital equates to resources that can be accumulated, saved, and spent. Capital is property. It is an asset; something we can buy and sell. In general, I don’t like the impersonal nature of calling people human capital, since it removes the obligation and responsibility to consider the feelings and needs of people across our society. We all have equal rights, but we don’t have equal intellect and aptitude. People can’t be bought and sold literally – like slaves prior to 19th century to facilitate industry, comfort or desire. However, when we refer to human capital, disconnecting ourselves from humanity, we are able to provide an abstract explanation for one of the most important ingredients in growing the economy – people with skills and knowledge ready to contribute. The economic incentives of profit and capital accumulation are what drive industry to invest in education and seek good returns. It is not a perfect system. The inputs, outputs and residuals have to be managed by its stakeholders including government, institutions and industry.
The American Dream promotes the benefits of improving one’s educational credentials for decades. It has created the finest postsecondary education system in the world fueled by research funding and government spending in order to foster educational opportunities. The stimulated drive to serve knowledge creation through research and knowledge sharing through teaching is rooted in economic development. We often call out the linkages between academic pursuit and work force as the means to justify the investment in educational aspirations, since theoretically we can make more money, if we are better educated. We would also pay more taxes and consume more products and services – thus making this a win/win for society overall.
The knowledge economy values innovation because it drives change, which is the catalyst for selling products and services between those that have them and those that desire them. The knowledge economy is rooted in the intellectual investment of education. The return on investment, when analyzed, reveals how interests are motivated and influenced by credentials, which is how we distinguish prior efforts in pursuit of knowledge and innovation. Thus, we place a high value on knowledge – often celebrated as “knowledge is power.”
Who is interested in helping reduce the “incompatibles” across the education industry that are contributing to confusion, frustration and inefficiency? Our decentralized higher education system conceived of institutional autonomy and academic freedom has resulted in the unintended consequences most discount as the “leaky faucet” in the supply chain. Students “flow” through K12, postsecondary education and into the workforce in fits of starts and stops as they manage day to day life circumstances. Many policy makers are attempting to stimulate changes in how educational organizations and government agencies work together to tighten up the joints, so to speak. This takes real data -- measured and reported to reveal gaps and cracks. And, with varying means of defining data, we often take the lowest common denominator abstracting the underlying differences meant to be measured.
Why? Well, there are millions of students completing course credentials from multiple providers as they aspire to complete their degree through various course offerings. Representing the higher education continuum (previously completed college courses from years ago, proficiency exams, and military training) adults are re-entering colleges and universities hoping to enhance their employability. Overwhelmingly, people are struggling to matter as they seek respect for their prior learning or credentials.
One thing we know for sure: Like no other generation before us, today’s learners are mobile. And, the data tracking their actions are disconnected, particularly between the systems most used by government, industry and education.
The cycle is repeated across time and location over and over again. Millions and millions of people are sold on the belief their course investment will have currency, value and will be worth something in the future as they pursue to improve their lives. They seek to compile prior learning across incompatible sources to reflect relevancy and purpose. We call them contemporary students because they are older, more mobile and generally employed - and they outnumber traditional students 7 to 1.
Nope, it is not our responsibility to address the incompatibilities of programs, courses and policies even though the today’s systems contribute to the confusion and frustration found on most college campuses. Institutions and States are responsible for aligning and tuning their curriculum, right?
The paralyzing impact of the confluence of data, process and people spanning thousands of institutions is outside our control and we are not interested in allocating resources on something we can’t make money from because no one is responsible. Bottom line, the economic success derived from selling and deploying proprietary systems is harmful to the community we are trying to serve the most – the student. The answer heard across the academy is often we don’t care enough about this problem to address the resources needed to solve it.
How can we fix the consequence of our industry’s myopic business plans that have so negatively affected the social welfare of so many others – namely the students? We have sold, deployed and maintained stand-alone, proprietary and often closed administrative and academic systems for decades without thinking about the consequences on students stopping and starting.
Thousands of institutions have deployed software designed to address resource management issues under the auspices of their institutional missions. Actually, in retrospect they were more likely satisfying institutional needs without consideration for the future impact of those decisions on our increasingly mobile, global, and diverse students. How could they have known? Can you help them?
Will you help?
We have limited resources is the most obvious answer. How can we expend resources on something that has no benefit to our organization directly is often the follow-up answer. We can't justify spending resources on fixing the implications of how localized systems can't help students and advisors map out academic pathways and progress because they are disconnected. Can we?
Thus, the PESC call for EdUnify. EdUnify is a concept that highlights our desire to keep systems decentralized, yet enable a means to connect, share and exchange data services to bridge the differences. Even though we all contribute to the externalities by producing systems apart from the entire ecosystem, we can contribute effort and respect the differences, instead of marginalizing them. Through the development of a simple and elegant automated look-up service, we can help stimulate the market forces to align organizational interests by bridging technologies that can enable collaboration and communications of interest. That is a good thing for industry, education, government and most importantly, the students we serve as they aspire to improve their lot.
The social contract for people spanning organizations, corporations and institutions has been debated for centuries. Rousseau's 1762 treatise, see The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right had a major impact on the formation of the United States of America and our constitution. It is time we recognize the need to form new governance on the rules of data in the virtual world of computing, education and commerce that balance our rights/interest to sustain the evolution of the academy.
This is what PESC is all about.
Come join us. www.pesc.org
Industry focuses resources to maximize profit within a market driven economy. Governments tend to cover the societal implications of commerce or the lack thereof. Institutions, or generally any organization deemed to provide educational training and credentials, focus on sustainability and mission as they serve their communities or markets. The pendulum swings between freedom and regulation (whether through self-regulating or mandatory laws enacted) controlling the implications of responsibility.
Our orientation to and expectation of government evolves from these implications. The social and democratic perspectives of fairness, goodwill, safety and freewill pull and push to an unbalanced state similar to a Monopoly game where winner takes all. The loser walks away empty handed. Fairness is not in the cards.
Balancing motives and return is difficult in the competitive real world, even with shared values. The engine of our economy needs a carburetor to mix the right balance of fuel (what goes in), work (what comes out) and waste (the residuals unused) – which then has to be buffered by mufflers and exhaust systems to minimize the impact on the environment and our health. Think of the evolution of the automobile industry and its many changes since the first innovation brought the value of faster horses to the market. Producers and consumers made adjustments as the value/benefit/cost shifted and as we learned more about the impact of the automobile on our world. Think about the role governments played in the evolution of the automobile industry, from requiring gas mileage disclosure to bumper safety. And, think about how the industry banded together to fight against moves to regulate or require social responsibility.
Government generally focuses on what is the common good, depending on perspective, policy and orientation. What falls within or outside one’s commercial area of focus is external. Pollution is an example of a negative externality. Smoking and the impact of health is another. Driving while intoxicated is an externality created by the selling and consumption of alcohol. Global warming is another. Agriculture and planting stimulate the production of oxygen and the reduction of CO2. Education is an example of an externality benefit when members of society other than the students themselves benefit from a more educated population.
Government-sponsored educational organizations, influenced by industry to train and prepare people across our society for the work force, are the foundation of our growing economy. Most would agree the collaboration between government and industry is aligned to foster what is often called human capital in a state, region, or country.
Capital equates to resources that can be accumulated, saved, and spent. Capital is property. It is an asset; something we can buy and sell. In general, I don’t like the impersonal nature of calling people human capital, since it removes the obligation and responsibility to consider the feelings and needs of people across our society. We all have equal rights, but we don’t have equal intellect and aptitude. People can’t be bought and sold literally – like slaves prior to 19th century to facilitate industry, comfort or desire. However, when we refer to human capital, disconnecting ourselves from humanity, we are able to provide an abstract explanation for one of the most important ingredients in growing the economy – people with skills and knowledge ready to contribute. The economic incentives of profit and capital accumulation are what drive industry to invest in education and seek good returns. It is not a perfect system. The inputs, outputs and residuals have to be managed by its stakeholders including government, institutions and industry.
The American Dream promotes the benefits of improving one’s educational credentials for decades. It has created the finest postsecondary education system in the world fueled by research funding and government spending in order to foster educational opportunities. The stimulated drive to serve knowledge creation through research and knowledge sharing through teaching is rooted in economic development. We often call out the linkages between academic pursuit and work force as the means to justify the investment in educational aspirations, since theoretically we can make more money, if we are better educated. We would also pay more taxes and consume more products and services – thus making this a win/win for society overall.
The knowledge economy values innovation because it drives change, which is the catalyst for selling products and services between those that have them and those that desire them. The knowledge economy is rooted in the intellectual investment of education. The return on investment, when analyzed, reveals how interests are motivated and influenced by credentials, which is how we distinguish prior efforts in pursuit of knowledge and innovation. Thus, we place a high value on knowledge – often celebrated as “knowledge is power.”
Who is interested in helping reduce the “incompatibles” across the education industry that are contributing to confusion, frustration and inefficiency? Our decentralized higher education system conceived of institutional autonomy and academic freedom has resulted in the unintended consequences most discount as the “leaky faucet” in the supply chain. Students “flow” through K12, postsecondary education and into the workforce in fits of starts and stops as they manage day to day life circumstances. Many policy makers are attempting to stimulate changes in how educational organizations and government agencies work together to tighten up the joints, so to speak. This takes real data -- measured and reported to reveal gaps and cracks. And, with varying means of defining data, we often take the lowest common denominator abstracting the underlying differences meant to be measured.
Why? Well, there are millions of students completing course credentials from multiple providers as they aspire to complete their degree through various course offerings. Representing the higher education continuum (previously completed college courses from years ago, proficiency exams, and military training) adults are re-entering colleges and universities hoping to enhance their employability. Overwhelmingly, people are struggling to matter as they seek respect for their prior learning or credentials.
One thing we know for sure: Like no other generation before us, today’s learners are mobile. And, the data tracking their actions are disconnected, particularly between the systems most used by government, industry and education.
The cycle is repeated across time and location over and over again. Millions and millions of people are sold on the belief their course investment will have currency, value and will be worth something in the future as they pursue to improve their lives. They seek to compile prior learning across incompatible sources to reflect relevancy and purpose. We call them contemporary students because they are older, more mobile and generally employed - and they outnumber traditional students 7 to 1.
Nope, it is not our responsibility to address the incompatibilities of programs, courses and policies even though the today’s systems contribute to the confusion and frustration found on most college campuses. Institutions and States are responsible for aligning and tuning their curriculum, right?
The paralyzing impact of the confluence of data, process and people spanning thousands of institutions is outside our control and we are not interested in allocating resources on something we can’t make money from because no one is responsible. Bottom line, the economic success derived from selling and deploying proprietary systems is harmful to the community we are trying to serve the most – the student. The answer heard across the academy is often we don’t care enough about this problem to address the resources needed to solve it.
How can we fix the consequence of our industry’s myopic business plans that have so negatively affected the social welfare of so many others – namely the students? We have sold, deployed and maintained stand-alone, proprietary and often closed administrative and academic systems for decades without thinking about the consequences on students stopping and starting.
Thousands of institutions have deployed software designed to address resource management issues under the auspices of their institutional missions. Actually, in retrospect they were more likely satisfying institutional needs without consideration for the future impact of those decisions on our increasingly mobile, global, and diverse students. How could they have known? Can you help them?
Will you help?
We have limited resources is the most obvious answer. How can we expend resources on something that has no benefit to our organization directly is often the follow-up answer. We can't justify spending resources on fixing the implications of how localized systems can't help students and advisors map out academic pathways and progress because they are disconnected. Can we?
Thus, the PESC call for EdUnify. EdUnify is a concept that highlights our desire to keep systems decentralized, yet enable a means to connect, share and exchange data services to bridge the differences. Even though we all contribute to the externalities by producing systems apart from the entire ecosystem, we can contribute effort and respect the differences, instead of marginalizing them. Through the development of a simple and elegant automated look-up service, we can help stimulate the market forces to align organizational interests by bridging technologies that can enable collaboration and communications of interest. That is a good thing for industry, education, government and most importantly, the students we serve as they aspire to improve their lot.
The social contract for people spanning organizations, corporations and institutions has been debated for centuries. Rousseau's 1762 treatise, see The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right had a major impact on the formation of the United States of America and our constitution. It is time we recognize the need to form new governance on the rules of data in the virtual world of computing, education and commerce that balance our rights/interest to sustain the evolution of the academy.
This is what PESC is all about.
Come join us. www.pesc.org
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The future of enterprise software in Higher Education
Today, the Higher Education software market is well saturated with enterprise software components and systems developed across decades of investment and deployment. I am describing student systems, financial management systems, human resource management systems, learning management systems, course management systems, grants management systems, email systems, document management systems, e-portals and business intelligence as enterprise software since the majority of the university and college community utilize and are dependent on the functions delivered from the software and interconnections. We use to describe these systems as mission critical and covered the essential functions of an institution's operation. Some of the primary assumptions made by enterprise software rely on the value delivered through the combination of functions, the common look, the umbrella support and the shared resources. The integrated suite versus best of class software systems is not at issue. The philosophical boundaries have been crossed so it is greyer than black and white.
Enterprise software combines many functions into one system, like a home entertainment system I bought from RCA years ago. The pre-engineered unit allowed me to plug in the packaged components to play and watch my videos and music I acquire at local stores on CD and DVD. My laptop computer is similar. It comes bundled with CPU, disk, dvd/cd, memory, sound card, ports, screen, keyboard and configurable expansion options. Someone else put in all the effort to figure out what those components were, acquired or built them and made a single unit that I could affordably acquire. We pay the value for the combined unit which adds convenience over doing it all myself. My entertainment unit lives in my family room next to my plasma screen. My laptop is my business desktop and home computer.
From ERP (enterprise resource planning) to departmental to desktop to web, software is designed and built to serve functions and people that evolve from use. Use is another way of reflecting behavior. Software systems deliver value only if they continue to evolve with the rest of the world. Along comes disruptive changes and the assumptions once relied upon, break down. Like my RCA home entertainment system, enterprise software is at a fork in the road. I rarely use my home entertainment system these days, since I acquire music on iTunes and rarely acquire physical medium any more. The system has been marginalized by alternatives. And, soon, I will remove it from my family room, because it is just taking up space, power and can be supplanted by other specialized devices with superior convenience. My laptop has a useful life as well. I would average about two years with one. With new technical features to improve my convenience, many of us replace our laptops to improve speed, update operating systems and add the components newly introduced since my last acquisition. My new laptop has a nice camera, HDMI port and a huge amount of disk to store movies. Plus, the new N-network features improved by upload and download speed almost five fold over my old laptop and gave me greater distance from my access point.
We can debate the timeframe. Traditional enterprise software vendors are like deer in headlights. The market is saturated from one perspective and growing more and more obsolete from another. We can debate what is disruptive enough to the install base and what future events will draw institutions to move away from hosting enterprise software systems and components. The inevitable pattern of obsolescence will continue as new innovations supplant older enterprise software solutions and functions. It may take another ten years when we think of the longevity of organizations and computing as an industry and discipline to shift. But, the reason the present model of enterprise software will be supplanted by new open shared community based platforms seems inevitable to me in that the complexity of assembly, deployment, sales and support will make the enterprise single vendor, single platform obsolete and too costly compared to software as a service (SaaS) or on-demand components integrated along agile boundaries well defined by industry standards. The question is just a matter of time. Just as the rise and fall of video outlets, photo reproduction and distribution channels changed for autos, electronics and even legal services, we will see the evolution of digital utilities leveraging the network effect and viral adoption of components bringing value to the market as new computing services distribute greater value than controlling one's own technology stack through proprietary locks that are artificially reinforced because it is within the scope of the vendors offering or not.
Higher education, a niche that has long prided itself for sticking with traditions will be the last bastion of enterprise software managed in their localized data centers and controlled by each institution as if it was their own. Many schools have already moved their ISP and email services outside. Industries outside higher education are on a fast track replacing proprietary enterprise systems with SaaS and on-demand components for the last decade breaking down the centralized control and oversight of IT. We are in a new cycle of evolution no doubt. So, if you are an enterprise software company serving higher education, take heed. Get it while you can. Higher education is an industry leveraging their investment in software for extended periods. More than than most industries because of the complexity of moving organizations beyond boundaries and the past the effort it takes to change. It takes years and years to setup and implement software systems in higher education because of the committee decision. And, it will take years and years for the investments made today to be replaced. No great rush.
Wait. If that is the case, then why are the enterprise software companies serving higher education retrenching and pulling back? Is it just the economy? Why are they struggling with reinvestment? And, why are they fixated on proprietary behaviors like a caged animal with its food? They control access to their environments like they are Fort Knox and protecting gold. Unlike many new internet and web savvy companies, they lack integration and open technology to help institutions extend their investment. They promise that, but rarely deliver it as part of baseline services, because of the revenue they would be giving up. They pay lip service to open industry standards yielding slow adoption in general. This is part of the problem my RCA home entertainment had. If it had the ability to access iTunes, I would be still using it today. But, it is locked down with a proprietary box and no means to extend even though it is connected to my internet enabled TV. Maybe there is no alternative. Enterprise software vendors become buffered from reality that they sit patiently waiting for the next big thing, instead of inventing and innovating new products cannibalizing their own install base. With business models evolving faster than software development life cycles, what is a company to do with stuff developed over twenty years that can't be re-written when the install base is seeking incremental steps?
Is open source a replacement for enterprise software? I don't think so. It confuses the discussion to degree. Because the debate between open source and proprietary is also grey. The future of enterprise software is not determined by how the software is developed and deployed. It could be freeware, shareware, and proprietary or home grown. Open source or community source or community shared resources are three different models. How software is designed, developed and deployed is really the issue. What point of view is it trying to serve? The issue is how will cloud computing, SaaS and on-demand functions hosted by digital utilities be integrated into enterprises eroding the one system source or vendor and the requirement to locally manage the technology, the stack, the servers and the connections?
Yesterday's software was designed as an extension and replacement for files, forms and actions that required input, processing, storage and reporting. I remember replacing paper and manual processes with record keeping software systems managed by a drove of users thirty years ago. It is rare today to replace a manual and paper based system. We always thought the ROI was the replacement of staff or the cost savings of reducing the labor to perform things like mail merges, because the old way of looking at things focused on the traditional work in an organization that required record keeping, archives, reporting, etc. Man, was that wrong.
Software evolved from table driven to procedure driven to event driven to user driven. Self service and the dot.com era before the turn of the century reflected the hype cycle. Many still live in this realm of one stage or another. I still can't believe how much COBOL based systems are still out there running. The effort to develop complex data models optimized for storage and retrieval were called enterprise systems and they had little to do with the value of what the software did for users or customers. We think in terms of logical, physical and normalized structures now, requiring common steps organized to serve the machine or system design, not the users or customers. This is what we are moving away from. When the organization decided to move to a new platform, everyone worked together to feed the system move. I still see this today. The effort expended sucks the wind out of the lungs of most organizations. Have you ever found an organization that really improved by implementing an ERP? Is the ERP really being used to better plan the use of resources in a university of college environment? This will change. That was the intent originally. It was over-hyped along with the dot.com run up. It does not have to be that way, as more and more evidence shows that software can be implemented with far less effort, when engineered in smaller components allowing the value to be gained in a few days, not months or years.
I recall designing application functions to support CRUD (create, read, update and delete), represent the relationships between tables and how users would serve the system collecting data which we would then transform into information through reports. Looking back, I can remember thinking a certain way about functions and processes. So, software from this bi-gone era, which is still in place across thousands of colleges and universities, is like the grass outside my house. I have to keep feeding it, watering it, weeding it and cutting it. It looks nice on the surface. It is a huge expense – for what purpose? And, rarely does anyone come and value it or walk on it. Each week, it raises the thought of what it would be like if I would let it grow. Does it matter? What I once thought was important, is now just a field of grass I pay little attention too. The assumption of course is, I won't be living in this house forever and eventually will move because of the effort to keep up with things, like cutting the grass, painting and not needing all this space.
Is the shift from enterprise software to open platforms under way? I think the one-size-fits-all set of modules developed by a single vendor or community with limited connections is way too confining in today's internet world that is like entropy expanding in the universe. Even with proprietary API's (application programming interfaces) pre-built and hidden under the hood, enterprise software is constraining and overwhelms most institution's IT resources because they are designed from the process of satisfying what the "system" needs to continue to operate, and not the user or customer who needs to bring value working together. The whole premise of enterprise system over the last twenty years is inside out. The old premise is similar to railroad companies who never transitioned to making automobiles or other forms of transportation including airplanes, because they were in the rail business presuming the points of destination, confined by the method and not willing to risk challenging their install base of riders.
IT departments generally have little discretionary resources to attack new challenges, to answer the call for change. Nor, can they easily integrate new components into their environments without diverting limited resources and time to study the implications. Universities and colleges won't be able to compete or survive if they lack connectivity in the network world with applications that span their internal environments. Unifying and enabling IT to broker and manage decentralization, control of work flows spanning departments and intertwining a range of components hosted outside the enterprise, providing greater benefit from shared resources will be the challenge over the next decade. Vendors or systems offering support for open platforms will overtake those that lock down and hold back their clients desire for a new level of independence and flexibility. That is the future of enterprise software systems in higher education according to my perspective. It won't be overnight and a big rush. But, a slow march.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Launch of EdUnify
Educational institutions unite.
The business of learning is as large as the earth's oceans. Centered on the goal to help elevate human understanding, educational institutions have long developed unique Reservoirs of knowledge bounded by artificial lines of control. Learning in the 21st century is transforming to open commons, shared resources and communications that have allowed us to bridge the artificial boundaries of association and mission.
The business of learning is as large as the earth's oceans. Centered on the goal to help elevate human understanding, educational institutions have long developed unique Reservoirs of knowledge bounded by artificial lines of control. Learning in the 21st century is transforming to open commons, shared resources and communications that have allowed us to bridge the artificial boundaries of association and mission.
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