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Collaboration on Open Source


IT in Higher Education: There Must Be a Better Way - 4

Producers and Consumers
Open source projects in higher education are usually developed by a small number of institutions. As these projects become successful the number of institutions that use them grows beyond the originating institutions. That establishes a relationship – usually the consumer pays the producer. In open source this is not the case. So, how will the producer-consumer boundary play out? Will the producers continue to produce just for the glory?

The Institution and CIO Management Priorities
As an asset to the institution the CIO must deliver value. Some hypothetical CIO priorities and the corresponding advantage gained from using an open framework are listed in the following table:

Priority

Open Enterprise Benefit

Delivering projects that enable the institution to grow

By adopting a community framework projects can utilize components available without buy or build.

Linking business and IT strategies and plans

The open framework contains monitoring statistics that can measure how well a strategy is working.

The open framework stack is controlled by the higher education decision makers, allowing for proper alignment with the strategy.

Demonstrating the value of IS/IT

Lower cost

Applying metrics to IS organization and services

One example is that the framework removes redundancy, where each redundancy has an associated cost

Tightening security and privacy safeguards

Identity and Security are managed centrally, providing better ability to control

Improving business continuity readiness

Frameworks are known to be more agile

Improving the quality of IS service delivery

Reuse of existing components speeds delivery

Consolidating the IS organization and operations

Using a single model promotes cohesion

Developing leadership in the senior IS team

Better methods

Improving IT governance

The boundaries between IT and campus governance become uniform

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RESOURCES
Read Other A-HEC Reports & Articles on Open Source in Higher Education
CONTENTS
Introduction
Community Open Source
The Software Situation
Analysis - Part I: Governance & Evolution
Analysis - Part II: Open Enterprise Benefits
Analysis - Part III: Make-Buy Decisions
Summary - Join the Collaboration


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