These are very much my personal views, not necessarily those of my employer. I have to use this email address as it's the one I am subbed to the list with.
We went through an LMS migration between late 2004 (project start) and mid 2006 (new system 'go-live') - we didn't seriously consider an OS system and I am not sure how that would have fitted with the official tender process we needed to follow. Nonetheless the process was interesting in a number of ways and led me to the conclusion that there isn't a great (maybe not even a good) LMS currently available. There are reasonable ones but all seem hampered to a lesser or greater degree by the need to try and offer the eye-openingly wide (and often rapidly changing) range of functionality desired within a modern LMS but pitch it at the price range that's affordable to local authorites, academic institutions, etc. This just leads to lots of compromises, incomplete and buggy features & enhancements, etc. Not that LMS suppliers are the only software vendors guilty of this of course. So the possibility for an OS LMS to appeal to the market is quite high based on quality of product but of course that's not the only factor under consideration for a public library service and the others are areas in which OS needs to make progress to become a serious contender.
* Accountability
Local authorities like to see a contractual relationship - there needs to be someone accountable
* Migration
Local authorities usually want a company that can migrate their data for them from old to new LMS and modify it en route
* Corporate Support
Most library services will be reliant to a lesser or greater extent on corporate IT support so if OS systems are not accepted there then you cannot take them on
* System Admins
Availability of experienced sys admins (or the training to develop them) is needed
* Interoperability with other systems & support for common industry protocols
Our project ended up procuring 10 different servers for different aspects of the solution which highlights the amount of interoperability required.
Doubtless, there are more issues but they are a good start.
There has been a lot of change in the LMS market over the past couple of years, the effects of which may need time to shake out. What is for certain is that migrating systems is a very time intensive and costly process. LMS vendors know this, know customers can not change systems easily if dissatisfied and therefore (again my opinion) concentrate much more effort on acquiring new clients than satisfying existing ones. Again, they are by no means the only sector doing this (including our own?) but it means you have to be as sure as you can be when choosing a product that you are making the right choice. This often means a conservatism creeps into the decision making that doesn't favour the OS systems.
I'll be interested to see your article Ken.
Robert Day
ICT Manager
Cambridgeshire Libraries
The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. If you receive this email by mistake please notify the sender and delete it immediately. Opinions expressed are those of the individual and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Cambridgeshire County Council. All sent and received email from Cambridgeshire County Council is automatically scanned for the presence of computer viruses and security issues
|