Assessment of Portal Options

Presented to:

Technology CommitteeUMS Board of Trustees

May 18, 2010

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The CPS Assessment Team

Matt Combs

Tom Danford

Ed Cornelius

Brian Ellis

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Topics for this Presentation

Purpose of the Project

Benefits of a Portal

Data we Collected

What UMS Constituents Want in a Portal

Different Types of Portals we Considered

The Two we Recommend and Why

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What We Were Asked To DO

1. Research various portal options in the market.

2. Recommend one or more options that will meet the needs of the University of Maine System institutions.

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What is a Portal?

Most would agree that an enterprise portal creates a common gateway to the data and services that the people throughout a school or system need to effectively share information, deliver constituent services more efficiently and work together on projects.

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What is a Portal? NOTE: V2

The enterprise portal is an integration platform that securely provides a central point for accessing, personalizing and configuring information and applications that are appropriate to their role(s) in the university.

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Benefits of a Portal

Saves time

Increases student engagement

Facilitates anytime, anywhere learning

Helps make better decisions

Lets faculty focus on research and instruction

Streamlines administrative tasks

Connects with your community

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Data Collection Methods

The Information We Collected to Make a Recommendation

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Data Collection Methods

1. Focus group sessions

2. Online Survey

3. Input from portal vendors

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Focus Group Participation

9 Focus Group Sessions with participants from all institutions

14 Faculty members

18 Students

32 Administrative Staff

15 Technical Staff

6 SMEs from UMS

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Online Survey Participation

Stakeholder Group

No. of Participants

Students 614

Faculty 291

Administrative Staff 239

Technical Staff 47

TOTAL 1191

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Vendor Participation

35 organizations were identified, contacted, and asked to provide information

A statement of work and a response spreadsheet were circulated

15 vendors (43 percent) willingly returned information on costs, timeline, functionality, and other factors

Results: Part 1

What Constituents Wanted in a Portal

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Strongest Needs

1. Portal must make navigating from one resource to the other more efficient and more user friendly

2. Portal must allow for campus specific branding and personalization of content and capabilities

3. Portal must allow for distributed administration even when centrally hosted

4. Portal should allow for users with multiple campus relationships and multiple roles

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5. Portal needs to include more collaborative tools or features to facilitate communication between student, students and advisors, instructors and student, and peer to peer

6. Portal must integrate with critical administrative systems to trigger alerts and notifications to relevant users

7. Portal should be able to allow for distributed contribution model

Results: Part 2

Portal Options That We Investigated

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Five Categories of Portals

1. Portal Development Partner (Commercial)

2. Portal Development Partner (Open Source)

3. Turnkey COTS Portal

4. Turnkey COTS SaaS

5. Turnkey Non-Profit Consortium

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Factors That we Assessed for each Portal Option

1. Benefits

2. Drawbacks

3. Acquisition costs

4. Maintenance & upgrade costs

5. Implementation costs

6. Timeframe

7. Technical skills needed

8. Level of risk

9. Hardware costs

10.Staffing costs

11.TCO

12.ROI factors

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Selected Findings

Each portal category had its strengths and weaknesses

All portal options will satisfy most if not all the needs and requirements of UMS stakeholders

Projected over 5 years, the lowest TCO estimates were $3M to $4.4M

The highest TCO estimates were in a range of $13.3M to $13.7M

Options Going Forward

The Two Portal Options We Recommend and Why

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Two Solutions that will Best Benefit the UMS Institutions

Turnkey COTS (PeopleSoft) Turnkey Non-Profit Consortium

(Liferay)

These two portal options had several advantages for UMS institutions

Lowest TCO over five years in the range of $3.5M - $4M vs. the $5M - $13M range of the other portal option categories

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Turnkey COTS (PeopleSoft)

PeopleSoft portal is already integrated with the MaineStreet applications

Large installed base of clients

Software code is maintained and updated by the vendor

PeopleSoft portal can handle all user needs that we identified

Has the lowest TCO and the potential for the highest ROI

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Turnkey Non-Profit Consortium(Liferay)

Liferay is the leading open source enterprise portal

CampusEAI has support services and a private consortium of like minded schools

Liferay integrates with all key higher education administrative systems

Can deliver most if not all user needs

Comparatively low TCO

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The Choice for UMS

UMS essentially must make a choice between relying on a well regarded commercial product (PeopleSoft) and a well regarded “open source” product (Liferay).

Both paths have pros and cons and the good news is that UMS has experience with each. Total Cost of Ownership over time is fairly similar and risk factors equal out.

Assessment of Portal Options

Presented to:

Technology CommitteeUMS Board of Trustees

May 18, 2010