John Lewis from Unicon talked about open-source in Universities. Higher Ed has an extremely complex, dynamic, organizational structures. uPortal has grouping and other mechanisms which are more sophisticated than other projects, battle tested for large and sophisticated higher-ed deployments. CAS was one of the first systems, has features like Proxy Auth that no one else has, and is widely adopted — integrated into commercial and other frameworks like ACEGI. Hypercontent – why another CMS? Hypercontent separates content management from presentation, CAS enabled, reuses uPortal GAP, portlet content & management tools.
Open standards are important – create well-defined contracts for interaction, network effect makes standards more valuable the more widely they’re adopted.
Open source is important. Consumers get honest relationship, no lock-in, etc. Vendors can use it as competitive advantage, and gain broader community. Discussion of the difference between community-driven and commercially-driven open-source.
John thinks that uPortal + CAS + OpenLDAP could be an identity management solution.
“Open Source Showcase” was a Unicon project to assemble open source into a sample integration. Unicon is refocusing on services, support for Higher Ed, and delivering “cooperative support.” uPoral, CAS, HyperContent, Sakai, Zimbra, Alfresco, JForum, OpenLDAP. CAS integration tying things together, HyperContent dashboard & portlets, Sakai summaries, etc.
hey jason, glad you are blogging this. was there any in-depth discussion of alfresco?
did unicon have any comments on the future of their academus product now they are providing uportal support?
Alfresco was mentioned as part of this sample stack, and I’m sure I saw a logo, but I don’t remember if it was demoed — I’m thinking not, but given my attention span, no guarantees.
Rutgers is pretty heavily-vested in vanilla (well, myRutgers flavored, anyway) uPortal, so I’m not so in touch with Academus. I think this support offering is a great new business opportunity, and clearly something the community’s been demanding. Based on my interactions with various Unicon employees though, I’m sure that supporing their current customers is pretty high on their minds though.