[143] in Enterprise Print Delivery Team
EDUCAUSE review article
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Ferrara)
Wed Mar 22 07:29:35 2000
Resent-From: "David F. Lambert" <LAMBERT@mitvma.mit.edu>
Resent-To: Enterprise Printing Delivery Project Team <printdel@MIT.EDU>
Message-Id: <200003220202.VAA20273@melbourne-city-street.MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 20:25:45 -0500
To: itlt@MIT.EDU, lambert@MIT.EDU
From: Robert Ferrara <rferrara@MIT.EDU>
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'buy' versus 'build' for administrative systems... -Dave
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Hello,
Here's a nice little nugget from the Southern Hemisphere. Prof. Michael
Vitale wrote an article in the Jan/Feb EDUCAUSE REVIEW (p.52) titled
"Recovering from Software Development". It's basically a treatise favoring
the buy (not build) option for administrative systems. There's a sorry tale
about how a confederation of Australian colleges lost a bundle of money
trying to develop their own ERP-like system. Prof. Vitale is at the
University of Melbourne's Business School (you know - way down under), so
it was quite a surprise to find this sentence leading off the second
paragraph of the story: "Some academic institutions, including MIT, have
also purchased ERP systems, but other institutions continue to struggle
with homegrown administrative software that is often more expensive,
riskier, and less functional than what is available on the market." Other
than a pub in Wellington, New Zealand, MIT is the only individual
institution specifically named in the entire article! .
Does anybody know this gentleman? The little bio accompanying the
article notes that he was formerly Director of Aministrative Computing at
Dartmouth and also taught at HBS.
Cheers, Bob
