Why would schools consider partnering with a vendor to operate a pilot? Why not just wait until the final product is released? For starters, pilots provide schools with a golden opportunity to get an early look at the software, take it for a test flight, and ask for changes tailored to their operating environment and business needs. In some cases,…

Colleges and universities are swimming in an ever-widening sea of data. Human beings and machines together generate about 2.5 "quintillion" (10[superscript 18]) bytes every day, according to IBM's latest estimate. The sources of all that data are dizzyingly diverse: e-mail, blogs, click streams, security cameras, weather sensors, social networks,…

With their budgets under increasing pressure, many campus IT directors are considering open source projects for the first time. On the face of it, the savings can be significant. Commercial emergency-planning software can cost upward of six figures, for example, whereas the open source Kuali Ready might run as little as $15,000 per year when…