University of the West Coast Task Group
A model for enterprise systems for the next
5 years – the role of a service oriented approach
A presentation from the Department of Information Services
• Why we think a service oriented approach is a good idea for us
• Probs:
• Insufficient requirements
• Missed opportunities
• Need an extreme programming team
• Vendor buy in needed
• Lots of academics not interested in e-learning: often some reluctance about new things
• Sometimes feel it’s education dragging technology not the other way around
• Teachers can’t always express what they’re after• Institutions must recognise teachers & techies
need to work together• Student satisfaction with IT is crucial, not just
teacher satisfaction
• Competing demands from different groups – and often conflicting demands
• Academics want flexibility and lots of responsibility for students, but administrators want more control!
• Flexibility costs more, as need to train more people
• SOA benefits:• Vendors more likely to implement an API which
conforms to industry standards• More skills development• Need a good development environment in the
institution• Need in house development team to develop
SOA at the moment, but maybe not so much in future
• With SOA, e-learning is not trailing behind current developments
• Can create services which are then offered to other institutions
• Another business model is going into partnership with vendors: can be problematic!
• SOA can be cheaper
• Give us lots of money to build SOA’s coz they’re flexible and support a diverse community
• Need to have an integration team• Learning technologists ought to be bridging gap
between techies & academics• Are learning technologists to support techies
implement stuff, or academics realise ideas, or both?
Prompts -
• Why an soa approach is a good idea for us,
• What we want to be able to do– advantages, – cost benefits, – how we get there, – what the issues are– What’s good about ws? – Sell idea to your teaching colleagues and committees