Below is a draft I wrote just under a year ago. This project is back on my plate and I had completely forgotten about this post. ASU is presenting here at SIGUCCS on Wednesday morning about this very project. I’ll be getting on the plane right after the presentation, so there will be a few quiet hours for the presentation to incubate. I’m looking foward to it.
(Note that this draft mentions that Chico’s current mail system is “competing” with the big web-based email providers, like Google and MS. It’s not. A lot of things change in a year.)
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Without getting into the “ASU is a huge research school and Chico is something different” discussion, let’s look with fondness upon ASU’s collaboration with Google:
The range of technology solutions that Google is putting forward, at the speed and scale that they have proven they can deliver them, is sparking nothing short of a revolution in the IT business, completely changing the paradigm for how hardware/software solutions are created and delivered. Allying with Google gives ASU access not only to today’s innovative Google Apps suite — that is an order of magnitude better than what ASU could field on its own — but it also puts ASU on an accelerated technology trajectory that is capable of keeping pace with the leaders in the field.
There is some real value here, despite the hyperbole. Let’s say Chico did an ASU-style email integration for students. Substantial value will be derived from the effect the “accelerated technology trajectory” will have on users.
Central IT at Chico fights the technology/innovation war on many fronts: email, learning/course management, classroom technology, computer labs and lab services, campus web development, student records/registration, and many more. When we’re successful, we get solid buy-in from the campus community in the product or service we roll out. When we’re not, we see the innovators and business-driven folks outside of central IT cobble together solutions that work for them.
Sometimes we win outright: department-owned campus portals aren’t popping up, nor are departments or colleges creating their own “smart” classrooms. Sometimes we win and lose; the campus LMS systems are serving most campus needs, although the implementation of an open source LMS by the campus continuing education center is being driven to fit its business needs not met by the standard campus LMS’s.
And sometimes, we can’t catch a break; the student e-mail system, despite being upgraded with a nice front end and a stable (compared to its predecssor) back end just two years ago, is thrashed about by spam attacks, a decidedly unhappy marriage to the campus student information system, and competition from all of the other web-based email systems out there, which the vast majority of students come to Chico already using.