Thu 31 Mar 2005
The college’s IT infrastructure took an uncertainty hit this week with the announcement that SunGard Data Systems was being purchased for $11.3 billion. A SunGard division, SunGard BSR, supplies the systems that the college uses to track alumni giving and power the alumni directory on Ephnet. This is the second IT uncertainty tremor to hit the college within the past several months. In December, Oracle completed its takover of PeopleSoft, the company that sells the software Williams uses to run the college (Admissions, class registration, financials, HR, etc.)
It will be interesting to see what impact the SunGard takeover has. SunGard BSR, while one of the powerhouses in fund-raising systems, has an unimpressive Web site (no search, minimal product descriptions) and is certainly not zippy in fixing problems. (Two examples as proof. The Ephnet login screen has a copyright of 2002. The E-mail Forwarding screen (you need to login to see it) says, “If you would like to remove yourself from the Williams email forwarding system, simply click on the Remove button below” — the button is non-existent. The Technology Committee of the Alumni Fund Vice Chairs reported these bugs two years ago, and they still aren’t fixed.) If the new ownership can improve these failings, all the more power to them. Let’s all pray.
The Oracle takeover of PeopleSoft also needs to play out. Here the white hats (PeopleSoft) and the black hats (Oracle) are easier to spot. Oracle is excellent at databases, but has been comparatively dismal at building applications (one of the reasons they decided to buy the better applications of PeopleSoft). Hopefully, Oracle won’t drive the PeopleSoft applications into the ground via neglect and arrogance, but based on past performance the chances are not good.
March 31st, 2005 at 9:35 pm
I’ve been thoroughly unimpressed with the ephnet site since it was started. It’s obvious that it was only tested (and shoddily) in Internet Explorer, because if you use it with any other browser, a lot of funny things start happening. If you mouse over page components in Firefox, for example, the sizes change. In Safari, everything (not just the text of the moused-over word) gets underlined. The site is almost unusable in Safari.
I wrote to complain about the problems with Safari shortly after graduating, and was told that it wasn’t supported. I guess that was reasonable enough, but the thing still failed in Mozilla and Netscape, and those were both popular. Apparently, nothing’s changed since then.
I hope that this takeover turns out for the better — maybe they’ll hire people who know how to do web development. Or, maybe they’ll go under, and Williams will have to find someone who does. The former sounds more appealing for the college.
March 31st, 2005 at 11:10 pm
Straight out of school I worked at a company with other Williams grads (one of the top execs at the company was a Williams grad), and we made software which schools used to operate. The database tools to pick classes, housing, bursar details, purchasing, etc.
We tried to get Williams to go with our products, but they moved to PeopleSoft (not sure who wrote the previous system, but it was an entirely Unix based system which was accessed via a terminal screen - we were designing web applications instead and proposed they use that like our other well known clients did - but they went with PS).
As for the EphNet stuff - I have frequently thought about banging out a system which would be much better than that - I think I could easily do it, as could probably about 500 other Williams grads over the past few years.
The problem is that legally Williams has the right to it all, so it would probably be a wasted effort to try to do it and then have them point out that it infringes on the school name. Even though we just want a better product.
As for the buyouts - things could start getting better because of the buyouts, but generally speaking there is at least a year of adjustment as the companies get used to what the other systems were doing. During this adjustment phase, everyone complains a lot and things break. It can be painful - but it doesn’t have to be and technically the systems should still work just fine unless they needed constant babysitting and aren’t likely to get it with the new setup.