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Enterprise Resource Planning
Is Open Source the ERP Cure-All?
5/1/2008
"A lot of the pundits who talk about universities moving away from traditional closed source applications are just plain wrong," asserts Ed Golod, president of Revenue Accelerators, a technology consulting firm in New York, well-versed in both closed and open source implementations across Windows and Linux environments. "Traditional ERP continues to be a solid choice for higher education."
Just ask administrators and technologists at the University of Alberta (Canada), which has more than 9,000 faculty and staff members. In order to accept electronic invoices from its vendors, in 2006 the university deployed an Oracle/PeopleSoft EDI (electronic data interchange) interface. At the same time, U of A deployed PeopleSoft Finance version 8.9. The project, overseen by Ciber (a prominent Oracle partner), helped the institution "streamline operations and reduce costs, eliminating the tedious manual tasks our staff dreaded," says Shelagh Holm, director of administrative information systems at U of A.
Hosted Alternatives for Campuses
Still, many universities are open to ERP alternatives. In fact, more and more universities are giving SaaS a try, and with good reason: Though traditional ERP applications are deployed on-premises within a university's data center, ensuring the university can closely monitor and manage its own ERP systems, the on-site approach may not be ideal for smaller and midsize colleges with limited staff and budget dollars. That's where SaaS comes in. For a predictable monthly fee, SaaS-based applications (which can be closed source or open source from vendors such as SugarCRM) allow universities to access hosted ERP and CRM applications over the internet-assuming those universities are comfortable letting their data reside off-site on a partner's servers.
In fact, some universities offer their own ERP applications as SaaS arrangements to "partner" universities. Drexel University, for instance, hosts SunGard SCT Banner software for Cabrini College (PA) and Medaille College (NY), according to Drexel's Bielec. Drexel also hosts a complete suite of Microsoft productivity applications for Philadelphia's High School of the Future, he adds.
Drexel's partner schools are "able to leverage Drexel's applications, and they receive the same level of IT support as would a large comprehensive research university, [only] on a small college IT budget," notes Bielec. On the flip side, he says, his own institution "benefits from an additional income stream and is able to apply additional resources to core Drexel IT services."
Bielec reports that the ERP SaaS solution now includes the latest Blackboard Vista upgrades and enhancements, and he adds that Drexel has experienced "no technical challenges" with the SCT Banner system. "SunGard also has been supportive of this endeavor and recognizes the move to software as a service, and the opportunities such arrangements can bring to small colleges," he explains.
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