| | March - 20198Perhaps the best news about student information systems (SIS) is that there are more robust, practical options for colleges and universities than at any time in history. Perhaps the worst news is that finding the ideal combination of SIS tools is probably the most challenging in history. There have technically been many SIS choices for more than a generation now. In fact, more than two dozen companies claimed to provide some SIS functionality during the pre-Y2K era of the Late 1990s. But many were built to address specific institutions based upon size, staffing, and financial situation. The choices for any one institution were limited in most cases. Indeed, most of the largest institutions implementing SIS' tended to congregate around one solution and mid-sized schools around another. The most diversity occurred at the smallest institutions. Using the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education as an example, the 11 largest universities are split between two SIS', while the three smallest institutions each utilize an SIS unique to themselves within the State System. But the landscape that dominated the past two decades is changing rapidly. Software as a service (SaaS) and the lift-and-shift of traditional on-premise SIS' into vendor-driven cloud hosting are all the rage. The days of an SIS running on premise within an institution's data center are fading in a hurry. Agile development techniques have helped ignite an arms race of functionality to the world of SIS', each hoping to outdo the competition's latest enhancement. Since a vendor selling SaaS no longer must worry about an institution's limitations regarding hardware, upgrade timing or IT staffing, responding to a competitor's new functionality should eventually occur in a relative instant. These trends also continue to lower the bar for potential vendors to enter the SIS space (especially for ancillary applications) and this further adds to the institution's options. Most higher education IT leaders probably have their own version of the story in which an end user returned from a conference touting a product they saw in the exhibit hall. The user was typically sold the joint promise of a fast implementation requiring no new hardware without a need to even bother the IT staff--all wrapped into a simple subscription fee. From the latest student-centered customer relationship management (CRM) to sleeker financial aid systems, more comprehensive student life software and most everything in between, this might be the golden age for best-of-breed products looking to `bolt on' to an SIS. By Bill Balint, CIO, Indiana University of Pennsylvania Navigating the Emerging Worldof Student Information Systems IN MY OPINION
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