Yap, An Entity (institute) with multiple system, is better than one, what-ever anybody is saying, the fact to have hybrid IT Solutions is every IT Manager nightmare, if done wrong and every client non expensive, literary free dream, if done right .
Every ERP Systems in my case, SunGard for Higher Education ERP Systems are very afraid, ( I can tell you it is an inferiority complexity issue) wants the customer to do everthing at it's end.
Take for example, to use a Document Management with SunGard ERP System, use SunGard Doc Management System for better integration and to use the SunGard Native Interface. For a Work Flow Management System, SunGard WorkFlow System, For Student Loans and Finance, SunGard Finance.
While in an open source, open format, SOA Enviroment you would have different systems, providing different services with an open API, open Format for better integration with other non vendor related products, think a standard communication protocol that decouple system dependencies on each other, hence better customization and expense saving, using closed, open, free or non free products, smoooooth integration.
But this is in LA LA Land :)
Another is our beloved Microsoft, it is example of a vendor who sometimes integrates well, with it's own technology (not without pain), and does not play well with anybody else. Shame One You :(
You find MS SQL, does not work except with .net and windows platform, existing solutions are a joke believe me I tried, despite the mono project and mono developer, any .net developer who can not afford windows and visual studio as his work station and IDE can not develop .net products, and this is not right, Take all open source languages: JAVA, Python, Perl, PHP, GTK, Qt, Databases like MySQL, Oracle, sqlite, and IDE's like NetBeans, Mono Developer, Eclipse.
For every Big Propertary non Free Solution for you school, Business or virtually any entity, you find an open source, community based alternative.
The only big problem, is lack of education, lack of knowledge and awareness about these solutions, Open Source is perceived as a risk by IT because they were brought up on other different rigid systems. Open Source maintenance, is the community (alot of people 1000+) and the Enterprise addition, and it cost less, as you get the server OS for free, client desktop for free, the solution sometimes is free, if not, only cost of maintenance is your concern.
A lot of closed pricey Systems comes with un-needed, bloated packages that actually cost a lot, and you have to pay sometimes for things you do not need.
With open source if you invested some time, or out sourced to some company this task, you can shave a lot of features you do not need and add things you need. it's not easy, but is do-able, and if you are lucky the community may have already built a solution for your problem.
So, the problem is the fact, open source solutions are not promoted well in this part of town, while it is the best alternative to pricey stolen OS, and Some Office package. use Ubuntu and open office instead.
The problem is as you keep using these proprietary solutions more and more, the risk factor and integration time for you to migrate to a more open solution becomes very difficult, as more information, more complexity, and more time to migrate these information from their proprietary format.
I will leave you with this example, I faced a problem one time, we had people who use windows for office applications only, a thin client need, so I suggested instead of paying $140 per client in 10 clients, what about Ubuntu Desktop and open office ( as I said before ) the problem it was too late, actually I found like 400 sheet per excel workbook, I found a lot of referencing and macros, it was too late, the fact that to take these sheets as it is is impossible, and my migration pain started, you find open office does not support more than 100 or 200 sheet per workbook, you find references not migrated with the sheet, you find a lot of quirks and formats, and actually xlsx is less compatible with open office than the old xls format, weird I thought the open XML was for interoperability.
So if we would have started with open office or any standard spreadsheet solution, we would have not been in this pickle we are in now.
To Be Continued ...
Thank You and good Bye
