[TOS] Improving campus RFP process?

[Chris Tyler]

I agree with Nicholas here: if an organization is looking for a
fully-supported solution, responding with an unsupported (or
community-supported with no SLA) DIY open source solution is a
non-starter.

However, a competent consulting and support company can come in with a
FOSS solution and have at least two advantages competing with
proprietary solutions:

- No-cost licensing. This leads to lower costs, which means some
combination of lower bid price and better margins for the support
vendor.

- No vendor lock in. If the support provider performs poorly, the buyer
can switch to any other competent provider, because there is a level
playing field -- there's no real opportunity for finger-pointing and
excuse-making when you have the complete source code.

Thus I would suggest that RFPs be worded in such a way that it's clear
that supported open source solutions are welcome, and be circulated not
just to software vendors, but also to support providers (both local
shops and multinational consulting firms will do these kinds of
proposals, depending on the scope).

The other way that open source gets into academic IT environments is
through skunkwork projects. I've seen two institutions implement Moodle
pilot programs, for example. In one, the Moodle "pilot" (a politically
expedient label) just kept going and going and going, year after year,
and more and more faculty switched to it because it was a nicer
environment. Moodle never became the "offical" CMS/LMS (as of yet), but
it's a well-loved alternative to the offical proprietary CMS.

At the other institution, the Moodle pilot moved from experiment to
preferred solution when that institution's proprietary CMS vendor was
bought out by another company. The IT review that this event
precipitated brought attention to the fact that the proprietary CMS was
running in a heavy-iron data center environment, while the Moodle pilot
was supporting 17,000 users on a quad-core sitting under someone's desk,
and back-of-envelope calculations showed that that machine could scale
up to about 90,000 users. The reduction in hardware and admin costs and
the massive savings in annual licensing fees cinched the deal.

Hope these rambly comments are useful--

-Chris, who was an open source IT consultant and support provider before
(and during) his years as a prof



On Wed, 2011-02-16 at 20:28 -0500, Nicholas Whittier wrote:
> While I hate to admit it, this seems like a situation where it would
> be best to beat them at their own game.  
> 
> 
> I think the best way to address the lacking license fees and proposal
> absence is to generate some proposals with installation, hosting,
> training, maintenance, and administrative fees.  A small for-profit
> organization could easily render something like Sakai a more viable
> product, as the associated fees would manage to undercut its more
> commercial and closed source opposition (I'm not familiar enough with
> the pricing for these products to make this claim, but I'm making it
> anyway...).  
> 
> 
> Having support from a for-profit organization and associated fees is a
> must, otherwise you will always face an inquisition over TCO/ROI and
> any proposal will fail to be seriously considered by steering
> committee seniority (excuse the sweeping generality).  However, when
> organizing the proposal around service and consulting fees that are
> tied to a commercial entity, the fact that the product offering is a
> FOSS product hardly needs to be explicit.  It is just a line-item
> buried in the proposal (one which happens to have a $0 cost).
> 
> 
> It sounds like an organization wishing to market and support Sakai
> could do well if it simply monitored these requests and made some
> proposals.  Also, as open source is gaining steam in education and
> software licensing costs are continuing to come into question,
> maintenance-only bids for such RFPs seem like they have a definite
> advantage.
> 
> 
> Are there any silver-tongued, Sakai-familiar, open source enthusiasts
> out there who are looking for a potential business opportunity?
>  Probably a little bit of a pipe-dream, but I think this business
> model is going to continue to rise in popularity.
> 
> 
> -- Nicholas
> 
> 2011/2/16 Jason Aubrey <aubreyja at gmail.com>
>         Hi All,
>         
>         
>         I have a question which is not exactly on topic, but is close
>         enough that I'm hoping some of you can point me in the right
>         direction.
>         
>         
>         So, I'm on my campus IT committee, the primary role of which
>         is to oversee the campus budget for academic computing. As a
>         new member of this committee, I recently had my first taste of
>         the process by which my institution makes a large software
>         purchase.  This is probably very similar to the process on
>         other campuses.  
>         
>         
>         In a nutshell: Needs are identified, requirements are
>         specified and an initial budget is approved.  Then the rubber
>         meets the road when the university issues a Request for
>         Proposals (RFP).  Vendors reply to the RFP, and a committee
>         selects the top three or so to come to campus to give
>         presentations. Then opinions are polled, negotiations ensue,
>         costs are nailed down and a final selection is made.
>         
>         
>         This process seems to me to very much favor commercial
>         software over open-source if for no other reason than the fact
>         that most open-source software projects don't have a national
>         network of sales-people to respond to RFPs.  In the particular
>         case I have in mind, for example, we wanted to get a
>         content-management system for Blackboard.  Three companies
>         responded: Oracle, Equella and EMC - all very expensive
>         products.  Except for Equella, all very inappropriate us (e.g.
>         only equella actually integrates with blackboard out of the
>         box.  The Oracle rep told us about how happy Coca-Cola and
>         Disney are with their product, but stared blankly when I asked
>         about support for SCORM).  However, there are some very good
>         open-source content management systems out there, some
>         specifically built with academia in mind, but they never got
>         considered and never would be considered under our RFP
>         process.
>         
>         
>         We had a very similar experience acquiring a web-conferencing
>         system for the campus. (And on our campus Moodle and Sakai
>         stand no chance against Blackboard's sales army.)
>         
>         
>         So, my question: how could this process be changed to give
>         quality open-source solutions a place at the table? At a
>         minimum, for example, any suggestions for how to get our RFPs
>         noticed by open-source projects that have the resources or
>         corporate supporters to respond (even if we don't know they
>         exist?)  Again, I realize this isn't exactly on topic - but
>         I'm hoping some of you might have some insight into this or
>         maybe suggestions on where to look.
>         
>         
>         Thanks!
>         Jason
>         
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> 
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