All of the above leads to a fundamental question, “What role should end-users play identifying specific software?”
Ok, get ready, here is what's going to get me in trouble: the answer, “one, two, three . . .they should not be identifying specific software.” End-users should be developing feature lists, functional requirements, use cases, business rules, work flow, etc. Using these and working with IT staff, potential software candidates can be identified that not only fit the needs of the academic unit, but the technical architecture of the data center. Too often I have been presented with solutions first. Issues revolving around customization (scope of services), support (service level agreements), licensing (total cost of ownership) should be the responsibility of the IT department. This group will best know how to enhance and to integrate software, align support through existing providers or identify new ones, and to assess the total cost of ownership against current resources. If, as an end-user, you and your department are expected to carry out technical assessments, analysis and recommendations, I would suggest your IT department is broken.
Quite honestly, we should not adopt an application simply because it is open source, just as we should not adopt software just because it is commercial supported. I firmly believe that the tenets of open source and community development create better software and therefore assume its presence will grow in adoption. But the responsibility for end-users in software analysis should be in defining functionality requirements and business needs, not in design, development, deployment or support.
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