Embedding, licences and lock-in
Ian Usher of Bucks (and big Moodle advocate) makes an interesting point in a recent blog posting:
embedding a learning platform in the culture of a school is something which you can’t do during a month’s or a week’s “free trial” of a commercial product – unless they’re willing to let you trial it for at least a year. GMS get to practice with their learning environment, get it how they want it, configure it as they see fit, and they’re not paying a licence to do so.
It is difficult to see how a commercial provider could do this and still stay in business unless their strategy is to initially pump in lots of money in order to dominate the market, and then rely on the network effect to recover costs and make a profit further down the line. At the end of the day, all providers need to generate some form of lock-in to build up future revenue. This is not a bad thing in itself as long as competition provides schools with the things they really value and need.
The problem arises when the cost of switching from one supplier to another is (or is perceived to be) too high. For me, this is a powerful argument for open standards and government’s role in enforcing these. Open standards can also help to ensure that dominant players do not get a complete strangle-hold on the market–anyone using the open document format as a standard yet? They also leave the door slightly ajar for smaller firms to come in and innovate.
To come back to the point about not paying the license whilst getting familiar with the product, there is still the overhead of having to maintain and develop the product, and train staff to use it: services that many commercial suppliers will offer. The key point here is that in the school Ian describes:
staff from the school, including technical staff and teaching staff, were involved today – it wasn’t a meeting with just one person who feels they are doing something on their own.
So clearly this is the type of school for which this solution is a good one. I.e. one with the confidence, vision and understanding of how to embed ICT, not one that needs to bring it in.