Hosting your website on campus not only has it's own risks but there are probably more "hidden costs" than you are aware. The same can be said for trying to deploying your own streaming media server, digital asset management system, course catalog management system or countless other technology tools. Many of these tools are needed by the people that handle marketing and are increasingly being migrating towards the web. In this thought provoking presentation Kyle hopes to start the discussion about why we do many of the technology projects the way we do and ask if there is a better, more cost effective way to do them. This isn't an us vs them debate but a how can we do more with less (people and/or budget). Disclaimer: I'm not saying IT is bad or evil I'm hoping to start a discussion that is long overdue about how and why we do projects the way before. I spent three years in Higher Ed IT so I can relate to both sides.

1. You Don’t Need IT To Do That
The World of Outsourcing & SaaS
Kyle James
@KyleJames
CEO @nuCloud
Founder @eduGuru
#eduOutsource

2. Why are we talking about this?

3. Who Am I?

4. Things that kill a project

5. Things that kill a project

6. Things that kill a project

7. Things that kill a project

8. Is the project still relevant?

9. We live in a new world
Have you heard of the
flattening of Higher
Education that is coming?

10. The Internet Changed Everything
• How software is delivered
• How quickly software can be implemented
• How quickly software
changes

11. The Core Mission

12. How can outsourcing be
beneficial and where are
the pitfalls?

13. Two Types of Outsourcing
Software/Data Management/Products
• Video Streaming Platform
• Email Hosting
• Data Warehouse
Services
• Video Production
• Graphic Design
• Specific Projects

14. Benefits of Outsourcing
• Technology is complex, changing and
converging
• Easier to upgrade and keep up to date
• Flexibility and scale
• People cost real money too! Really good
people are especially expensive
• Better disaster preparedness and
recovery
• Always available (web-accessible for a
mobile population)
• Lower/Fewer capital investments
• More predictable costs

15. Risks of Outsourcing
• Security & Privacy concerns
• Performance Issues
• Flexibility & Control Loss
• Loss of Institutional Knowledge

16. Myths of Outsourcing
• Everyone is doing it
• Outsourcing saves money
• Outsourcing is greener

17. How are schools
outsourcing today?

18. Survey of Schools
• In March I ran a survey of colleges and
universities of which 32 completed the survey.
• The data is probably not statistically significant
but there are definitely some interesting
things we can learn.

19. Are People in Favor of Outsourcing?
No 6.3%
Yes – but only in certain
cases when you can’t
meet certain needs 21.9%
Yes – It has it’s place for
certain applications 71.9%

20. Is Outsourcing Consistent?

21. Outsourcing Services

22. Outsourcing Software
We also asked people about a
range of software solutions that
we know have 3rd party systems
built. We tried to cover as many
of these systems as possible to
give us the widest range of what
people are using and how they
are using it.

23. Web Hosting
• We do not outsource our website hosting. While we keep an eye on the market, our
TCO for hosting on campus is still cheaper even after considering staff time. This is
because we manage server and hosting environments as a virtual/cloud service on
camups.
• Most web sites hosted by University, either as CMS sites or other types of sites --
HTML, ASP, etc. Of the many hundreds (thousands) of sites associated with the
university a certain percentage of official sites are hosted elsewhere but I couldn't
say how many. Sometimes this is due to limitations of university hosting, for
example a desire to use WordPress with full admin rights.
• AFAIK, Central IT and/or each division/college has the staff and expertise to
manage their own servers. Individual departments have the autonomy to spend
resources on outsourcing web hosting if they choose.

24. Website Content Management
• We use Contribute with a Perl shim that translates contribute templates to/from
our XML-based static file system. This was developed in-house.
• There was a multi-year search committee that dissolved after inactivity and no
results. As of 2009 I started communicating with OmniUpdate and we are started
implementation of OUCampus in 2011.
• We use Drupal on campus for everything, which makes it much easier for us to
write customized integration and we always know there are companies out there
who can help if needed.

25. Course Catalog
• Internally developed and hosted. Wrote own system because of the nature of the
institution.
• Originally everything was in an aging database, but it was recently scrapped--
without an alternative in place. Our current incarnation of the course catalog is a
website with links to PDFs. The PDFs however are not categorized based on
content, but the entire catalog cut into smaller chunks to save on file space for
transferring to our print vendor.
• I firmly believe that an internally built CMS could not compete with a system made
by a company that specializes in CMS, especially one that specializes in higher ed. A
homegrown CMS has too many problems to even list here, most
prevalent, turnover of those that created it!
• Our course catalog is awesome! It's written in Drupal and we're working on a new
Drupal Catalog open source project to share it with the world.

26. Digital Asset Management System
• Don't know about campus-wide, but our department is currently looking into
WebDAM.
• We use Flickr for photo management.
• I don't know that the marketing dept has one, though I know the web team
doesn't. We have a network share, but it doesn't get used much.

27. Video Streaming Platform
• Internally hosted for secure content. Other content is served via iTunesU or
YouTube.
• YouTube
• YouTube and Vimeo
• We have an in-house media streaming platform, though we are also exploring
migrating our video content to Youtube for the analytics and to take the load off
our servers.
• Watershed, then Edgecast, and soon to Livestream, Youtube for on demand.
Doesn't make sense to do video hosting in house. Need to get the bandwidth off
our network.
• we are bringing up an open source locally hosted solution

28. Email Hosting
• Faculty and staff are on Microsoft Exchange, but there is an enterprise Gmail setup
for students.
• Exchange
• Gmail
• Gmail - in the process of transitioning from an internally hosted Novell solution.
Extensive evaluation was undertaken of the market leaders before deciding google.
Main driver was email is not part of the core business of a University.

29. Data Warehouse
• Business Objects with Datatel
• SunGuard
• We have serveral. SAP and a number of bespoke systems. The complicated nature
of the underlying business makes it hard to grab out of the box solutions and apply
them.

30. Network Storage
• No idea except we do it ourselves.
• We encourage students to use google docs now.
• There is the possibility that central IT is going to implement an unlimited enterprise
Dropbox solution for all staff and faculty.
• Novell on campus because decision makers were concerned about sensitive data
being "in the cloud"

31. Online Application
• CommonApp
• In House, expensive to outsource
• Our admissions office as an internally built system but we also allow students to
use those common apps.
• Our applications system is internally developed. Again the small size of the market
(compared to the US) and complicate nature of the institution make it difficult to
buy off the shelf.

32. Net Price Calculator
• Developed in house. Better customization and integration.
• Our net price calculator is a custom Drupal module we wrote.
• We don't have this type of service.
• we use a locally hosted open source solution
• Noel Levitz
• Just went live. Forget who we used - financial aid office drove the bus on that.

33. Interactive Map/Virtual Tour
• Don't really have this type of service. We hook google maps into our student portal.
• no we locally host an in house mapping tool.
• We commissioned a new map. We're interested in building a new one in-house in
the next year, but we may have to outsource the construction -- we'd like to keep
the design and content in-house.
• We did it ourselves using Google maps and overlayed our drawn map - we're in the
process of adding video and text info about each building. We also use separate
versions of maps for large campus events to specify parking, etc. for those events.

34. Project Management Solution
• Basecamp
• Teamwork Project Manager. Cheap, full featured, easy to use. Better than
Basecamp for us.
• We use various across campus, on a school-by-school basis.
• Our team specifically uses a homebrew solution called "Taskmaster" that was
developed in-house several years ago. This app is PHP based (a rails version is
being developed) and is what we use to interact with clients and track our tasks
and projects in house. It is both a ticket / bugtracker as well as a project
management app.

35. Event Calendar System
• ActiveData
• This is currently manually managed.
• we locally host an open source solution (UNL Events Publisher)
• Localist. Requires no IT intervention (outside DNS entry), great support and
excellent adoption by the community.
• We uses Trumba at university level and many schools, departments, programs have
calendars within Trumba system or contribute to main calendar.

36. Blogging Platform
• There is no common campus solution. Most groups autonomously outsource for
their needs.
• WordPress
• University does host WordPress but only in limited use (restricted template, no
access to plug-ins except a few default) so many groups that want a blog get
outside hosting and use WordPress, Blogger, etc.
• We have used Wordpress on a couple occasions, though we don't do much with
blogging.

37. Email Marketing System
• MailChimp
• ConstantContact
• Campaign monitor custom branded. Went with it because we were able to develop
integration with our database erp (sungard's banner).
• University Advancement has a contract with ExactTarget, and we also email on
behalf of the college of business and economics and a few other entities. I imagine
most units on campus just manually curate an email list and send with
Outlook/Entourage.
• Several different systems are being used across campus by various groups, from
Alumni to Development to individual departments. The ones I've heard talked
about are ExactTarget, Constant Contact and MailChimp.

38. Emergency Messaging System
• 3n
• Blackboard Connect
• MIR3
• e2Campus
• we use 2SMS to send sms messages from an in house solution.
• We use a blending of the Rave SMS service along with custom campus tools to
push alerts to websites and digital signs.

39. When to outsource

40. Questions to Ask
When Outsourcing

41. When looking to outsource…
• Outsourcing isn’t perfect and
it definitely doesn’t work for
everyone or every scenario.
• There are definitely scenarios
where it makes sense, but
you have to understand the
unique nature of your school
and the strengths and
weaknesses

42. What are we trying to solve and why?
• Why are we doing this?

43. What do you gain from outsourcing?
• Are we just doing something
else to say that we did it?
• Budget, Flexibility, Scale?

44. Do we gain flexibility and cost savings?
• You are most likely looking at
outsourcing to save costs so
what are they?
• Don’t just move budget from
capital to operating.

45. How does outsourcing effect staffing?
• Is this intended to replace a
staff member?
• What are the hidden costs?

46. What internal changes must happen?
• Do custom integrations need
to be built?
• What is the real time involved
to “go live”?
• Who other systems/processes
does this impact?

47. What future decisions are impacted?
• What do we give up?
• How can we integrate going
forward?

48. What is our exit strategy?
What is the strategy if things don’t work out?

49. What services make the most sense?

50. What you can
easily outsource

51. What to outsource?

52. Outsource Platform/Hire Integrators
• Require APIs
• Hold vendors on security
• Ask for development schedule
• Go Lean!

53. Research - See what others are doing

54. Bill Gates Quote
We always overestimate the
change that will occur in the
next two years and
underestimate the change that
will occur in the next ten. Don't
let yourself be lulled into
inaction.
Bill Gates

55. Outsourcing Story
A couple I know, one of whom is an engineer, was remodeling their bathroom and
when it got to putting in new plumbing, the engineer thought that like the rest of the
project they could figure out how to do it themselves, and the one who wasn't an
engineer said, "well yes, we could figure it out, but you see darling, someone else
already has." It's not 1987 anymore, or even 1997. If there is a technology solution
you need, chances are someone else has that need to and someone has already
figured out how to do it. That is a long way to say, don't spend extra time and money
figuring out something, if someone else already has. And in 2012, chances are
someone has. And chances are, you have an engineer on your team who wants to
figure it out for themselves. Know when to choose to figure it out and when to hire
someone who already has.

56. The Core Mission

57. Questions?
Kyle James
@KyleJames
kyle@doteduguru.com