Background for Discussions Between Sakai and Oracle

21 August 2005 (Correction 23 August 2005)

Context

In a 1 July 2005 e-mail HEUG (Higher Education Users Group) President Mike TenEyck wrote: “In the course of the Board meetings with Oracle, …the Oracle Fusion product suite for Higher Education will include a major Learning Management tool, either by development or acquisition.”[1] There has been subsequent informal discussions and exchanges of e-mail between PeopleSoft users and Oracle Corporation representatives. One suggestion was for Oracle to use of Sakai for its learning management system.

This document provides information and analysis of Oracle Corporation’s possible use of Sakai code—which is permitted by license—in combination with current Oracle software products. It is intended for use by Sakai representatives. All of the information is from public sources.

Summary

· Oracle could use Sakai code in conjunction with the Oracle Collaboration Suite to offer a collaborative learning environment similar to Sakai.

· Oracle could use Sakai code or a combination of Sakai and ISIS/ASSIS code to extend Oracle Learning Management to have functionality comparable to or exceeding current proprietary learning systems.

· The association with Sakai, regardless of the amount of code used, could benefit Oracle marketing.

· Oracle could use CampusEAI to provide guidance on the development of the system and build a user community.

· Curtiss Barnes, a long-term colleague in the uPortal community because of his roles in CampusPipeline and subsequently SunGard SCT, may be a participant in the discussions.

Oracle Products

The Oracle Collaboration Suite was introduced in 2002. It was described:

In July 2002, we introduced Oracle Collaboration Suite, a single, integrated suite that manages email and voicemail messages, facsimiles, calendaring, file sharing, search and workflow. The Oracle Collaboration Suite centralizes administration and lowers operating costs by consolidating email and file servers. The Oracle Collaboration Suite is built on the Oracle9i Database and Oracle9iAS, supports enterprise-scale implementations and offers high-availability features like rapid server failover, disaster recovery and automated backup.[2]

Oracle Calendar is based on Corporate Time, a product of Steltor Ltd (Canada) acquired by Oracle Corporation. A number of members of the Common Solution Group were Corporate Time users and expressed concern about the future of Corporate Time and Steltor in their 19 September 2002 meeting in Seattle.[3]

“Oracle Collaboration Suite is a next-generation collaborative environment.” The components are shown in Figure 1.[4]

Figure 1 – Oracle Collaboration Suite Architecture

The Collaboration Suite is part of Oracle Middleware. According to the Butler Report, “The next version of Oracle Collaboration Suite is scheduled for release mid-2005, and promises to deliver better access management controls, policy-based library services, workflow, and Records Management features.” The report also observes: “Missing from the current release of Oracle Collaboration Suite is an Instant Messaging (IM) function. IM is fast becoming an important alternative to e-mail, as information workers buried by an avalanche of e-mail messages seek alternative, more appropriate forms of communication.”

“Oracle Learning Management is an enterprise learning management system (LMS) that

provides a complete, scalable, and open infrastructure that lets organizations manage,

deliver, and track training participation in online or classroom-based environments.

Learners interact with content, instructors, and peers at their own pace while facilitating

the need for widely dispersed staff to be trained in a consistent fashion. Managers can

automate key business flows - from order processing to training delivery; from

performance appraisals to training assessments. Turn learning into a business

advantage with Oracle Learning Management.” “Oracle Learning Management is part of the Oracle Human Resources family of applications, and integrates seamlessly with Oracle E-Business Suite and other Human Resources applications, including Human Resources (core), Self-Service HR, and Collaboration Suite.”[5]

“Oracle iLearning is an enterprise learning management system (LMS) that provides a

complete infrastructure for organizations to manage, deliver and track training

participation in online or classroom-based environments. The application permits

learners to interact with content, instructors and peers at their own pace while facilitating

the need for widely dispersed staff to be trained in a consistent fashion.”[6]

Oracle iLearning became available February 2001. The introductory price was “US$4 per named user per month, with a minimum of US$5,000 per year.”[7]

Oracle, like other human resources application vendors, include learning to meet compliance requirements, to provide “on demand” training, and to record successful completion in the human resources system. Typically the learning materials are licensed for general subjects and prepared by the using firm for other materials, such as product information. The organization and presentation of commercial materials follows the AICC design—short presentations, approximately 20 minutes, followed by a short quiz.

Profiled Oracle Users

On 4 May 2005 Jack Loftus wrote: “Oracle started at the head of the class at California Polytechnic University [San Luis Obispo], and over the past eight years has remained there under the guidance and support of the University's CIO, Jerry Hanley. … Hanley said his IT department is currently working on an applications-related project

concerning the integration of their learning management system, called Blackboard.

Blackboard Inc., the Washington, D.C.-based creator of the software, is an enterprise

software company specializing in online education.”[8] According to Loftus, Hanley praised Oracle saying: “he believed Cal Poly's exclusive use of their infrastructure came as a result of the database centric approach of the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based technology giant. Companies that don't think about a very secure and available back end database are in a position where they are not going to scale, remain secure or survive," In the late 1997 Hanley, who is also a member of the Oracle Higher Education Advisory board, decided to migrate to Oracle on the database from IBM DB2 running on Unix. Just five years later [2002], Hanley, formerly a 25-year veteran of telecommunications business with AT&T, took his IT staff of 120 and adopted the Oracle Collaboration Suite. California Polytechnic University San Louis Obispo was an early adopter of uPortal as the university’s enterprise portal.

Analysis of the Options

The Oracle Collaboration Suite provides six collaboration “tools.” To support collaboration currently in Sakai would require additional “tools”—Sakai has 15 to 20 depending upon which are included—and “context.” With some software development, context can be provided using Sakai, using JA-SIG’s Groups and Permissions, or extending the organizational representation currently in the e-Business suite.[9] If there is sufficient demand, the Oracle equivalent of the Sakai tools not yet available in the Oracle Collaboration Suite could be added to the Suite. Or they could be added as an education-only extension to the suite.

Oracle would have available the Sakai assessment model (SAMIGO) and the grade book. The functionality could be added to Oracle e-Business Suites (for higher education) as extension or replacement of current systems.

Because it would be necessary to have the same presentation—“look and feel”—as other Oracle Fusion products, any use of Sakai code would require adaptation.

Foothill College’s Melete could be used to extend Oracle’s iLearning. Likely this is not necessary since federal implementations of Oracle require compliance with the SCORM standards, and Oracle is established in this market. What Oracle likely does not have is an implementation of IMS Simple Sequencing or Learning Design. The U.K. Joint Information Systems Committee’s ISIS and ASSIS projects have implemented sequencing using the BPEL standard. Since BPEL workflow is fully supported as Oracle middleware, Oracle could adapt this JISC development to have an open standards learning presentation system.[10]

In summary, with some development—both integration and original—the current Oracle products could be extended using some Sakai code, Sakai designs, or just suggestions from the Sakai discussions. This would not only meet the needs of higher education users, but would provide additional functionality as businesses and government increase their use of e-Learning and additional methods of collaboration need to be supported. Based on current product announcements, these additional capabilities would, for some time, provide functionality not available in SAP, Lawson, or Microsoft products.

Because of Sakai’s 79% market recognition, any use of Sakai code, however small, would demonstrate Oracle’s awareness of the Sakai effort, relationship to the open source community, and the connection with leading universities.[11]

One of the reasons open source is attractive is the community that has developed around its use. If Oracle were to “adopt”—or more precisely “adapt”—Sakai, the modifications necessary for integration would likely create a product that was functionally competitive with Sakai. Oracle could, as it as done with, for example, the Application Server—“embrace and extend” Sakai. This suggests that broadening the scope of the CampusEAI’s support of the Oracle portal to include learning systems would be an alternative to building community separately or depending upon an affiliation with Sakai.[12] The three colleges and universities—Foothill College, University of Oklahoma and Linkoping University—that are both Sakai partners and members of CampusEAI are pleased with the service and code they are receiving from CampusEAI and expect to continue their affiliation.

Curtiss Barnes

Curtiss Barnes was recently named as Senior Director of Applications Strategy - Education & Research, Oracle Corporation. He may participate or lead the discussions with Sakai about the learning environment to be incorporated in a future release of the Oracle/PeopleSoft student information system.

Curtiss was one of the CampusPipeline executives shaping the company and involved in the sale of the company to SunGard SCT. His interest has been corporate finance. While at CampusPipeline and SunGard SCT he completed his MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.[13] He was one of the few CampusPipeline executives to be relocated to SCT headquarters at Malvern, Pennsylvania.

When dissident shareholders of SCT threatened SCT management, Curtiss was one of the principals (he would say “team member”) who negotiated the purchase of SCT by SunGard permitting SCT management to remain in place. And brought pressure on SCT to increase earning. Curtiss left SCT and briefly worked with PeopleSoft; he left PeopleSoft and now emerges as an Oracle Corporation executive. He is known in the Bay area venture capital community.

Jim Farmer 6 21 August 2005

Spelling correction 23 August 2005

[1] E-mail MikeTenEyck to unknown addressees, “HEUG Board Meets with Oracle Management, 1 July 20005, 9:59a.m. See www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/ORACLE/O050701T.pdf. Only the document number--the pdf file name-- will be given in subsequent citations. All Oracle documents are in the same eLibrary folder.

[2] From Oracle Corporation’s Security and Exchange Commission report 10-K filed 29 July 2002 (Document 020729A)

[3] Minutes and slides can be found in “Common Solutions Group Meeting 17-20 September 2002” (www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/CSG_US/CSG_0209.pdf).

[4] The diagram and quotations from the “Butler Report” can be found in “E-mail Management

TECHNOLOGY AUDIT Oracle: Oracle Collaboration Suite Release 2,” authored by Richard Edwards 28 April 2005 published by the Butler Group. See document O050428E.

[5] “Learning Management,” Oracle Corporation 28 July 2004. See document O040728W.

[6] From “iLearning: Train More Effectively and Lower Costs,” Oracle Corporation, 14 September 2004. See document O040914

[7] “News: Lessons Learned,” Profit Magazine, February 2001. See document O010200P.

[8] The quotations are from “CalPoly standardizes on Oracle,” by Jack Loftus, News Writer, published by Oracle Corporation 4 May 2005. See document O050504L.

[9] Because Groups and Permissions is being separated from uPortal as a separate service for uPortal version 3, support of GaP in Oracle would facilitate migration from uPortal to the Oracle portal; both support JSR 168 and WSRP portlets.

[10] Two recent briefings by Robert Sherratt, University of Hull (a Sakai partner), and Steve Jeyes of Edexcel, “ASSIS – Assessment and Sequencing” (H050405S) and “ISIS and Assis: A Tale of Two Projects” (H050126S) summarize the work.

[11] From the widely cited survey “Preliminary Analysis of the Open Source in Higher Education Survey Conducted from April 15, 2005 to May 1, 2005 by the Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness” (A050503A).

[12] Information about the CampusEAI Consortium can be found on the CampusEAI Website www.campuseai.org and “About CampusEAI Consortium” www.immagic.com/eLibrary/GENERAL/CMPUSEAI/C04026W.pdf.

[13] Curtis encouraged im+m CEO Justin Tilton to seek an MBA and encouraged him to attend Wharton. They have continued to share experience.