by Rob Abel, published May 3, 2005

Copyright 2005 Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness

Permission to redistribute in whole or part granted as long as attribution is given to A-HEC, http://www.a-hec.org/ 

Survey description

A brief opinion survey completed by 79 respondents, primarily higher education IT, instructional support, administrative, and executive staff, comparing the relative level of awareness and expectations of success of the open source initiatives Sakai, uPortal, Kuali, OSPI, LionShare, Moodle, and OKI.

Summary takeaways

(Important note: This survey and the preliminary results reported here should be considered as preliminary and indicative of potential future research only)

o      The open source course management system (CMS) Sakai emerged as the most recognized and most likely to succeed of the open source initiatives listed in the survey.   Impressively, over 75% of the respondents had heard of Sakai, well ahead of the other six initiatives.

o      The open source portal/portal framework uPortal was also highly recognized and expected to succeed in the marketplace.  uPortal came out on top from those respondents that rated their knowledge as excellent or expert.

o      Among those most knowledgeable, the open source ePortfolio initiative OSPI was perceived as having a strong probability of success, ranked third behind uPortal and Sakai.

o      The relatively new open source CMS Moodle came in surprisingly strong in terms of expectation to succeed, especially among those who were least expert in their knowledge of open source.  Moodle had a recognition level as high as uPortal, which was well ahead of the four remaining initiatives.

o      We were surprised by the degree of vulnerability to competition from open source indicated in the seven product categories explored in the survey (see Table II).  Ratios of over five to one in terms of those clearly indicating vulnerability seems to indicate general dissatisfaction or at least an unfilled need in the categories of assessment tools, ePortfolios, course management systems, and online course content.

o      It is interesting that assessment tools was the product category of most vulnerability, yet, there is no open source initiative know to us in this category (perhaps there should be).

o      Vulnerability of a category seemed to track inversely to how well penetrated or established a category is with existing commercial products.  The only major inconsistency with this was the strength of the CMS initiatives, Sakai and Moodle, in a category that according to previously published studies is highly penetrated by existing products.  This indicates a potentially interesting competitive dynamic developing between the incumbents and the open source initiatives.