G-Cube Blog

While reading my colleague Sachin’s post on HTML5 & Flash, I felt compelled to present my views on this debate from a e-learning developer’s perspective.

Stability: For all developers working in the technology aspect of e-learning (and all other aspects as well!) the most important factor is stability. Till date no browser is 100% compliant with HTML 4.01 which was released by W3C years ago.

Compliance, however, is not the only problem. Other than rendering of simple pages, every browser has a different behavior. The same goes with ECMA Script (JavaScript). Invariably every web-based application has to be programmed in a manner that a different HTML/JavaScript is generated based on the client’s browser. The long and short of it is, instability, and this causes major problems for the web-based application developers. What appears to work in Internet Explorer (IE) may not work on Firefox or Chrome and the other way around. To add to this bedlam, every browser has its own extensions – the trend which was started by Microsoft during IE 4 days.

Coming back to the question about adaptation of HTML 5 – which isn’t even fully standardized as of yet. Quoted from Wikipedia – “The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) started work on the specification in June 2004 under the name Web Applications 1.0.[1] As of March 2010[update], the specification is in the Draft Standard state at the WHATWG, and in Working Draft state at the W3C.”

Are we talking about adopting something which isn’t fully standardized yet? Knowing the history of browsers when it comes to compliance with HTML 1/2/3/4? Today, HTML 5 is nothing but one way for web-browser providers to claim that their browser supports HTML 5 and hence, are better than the competitor.

The biggest advantage of using Flash is stability, because it is owned, maintained and provided by a single body. If some Flash animation or video works on IE on MS Windows, it will work on Firefox on Linux or FreeBSD. The developer doesn’t have to unnecessarily worry about it!

The problem with HTML is that it is a standard and every browser provider has its own interpretation and implementation. Let’s take the example of TCP/IP, something which was standardized in late 80′s. Till date every OS has its own quirks when it comes to the implementation of TCP/IP stack, and this causes problems for developers making interoperable and portable applications. Another example that will strike chord with e-learning developers would be implementation of SCORM across LMS’s and e-learning courses. SCORM is a well defined standard by ADL, but then everyone has their own interpretation of the same which causes problems all across.

Apples vs. Oranges?: A comparison between Flash and HTML 5 appears to be a comparison between apples and oranges. Comparison of Flash with MS Silverlight or Google Gears or Java Applets seems appropriate. HTML (3 or 4 or 5) is about Markup – a building-block of web pages. Flash on the other side is an extremely rich environment for creating highly interactive content, with added features of 2-D and 3-D. Video is just a small part of Flash – though heavily used. If the only consideration were video (which is not the entire debate, though a large part of it), we may compare HTML 5 with flash.

HTML video vs. Flash video: Again quoting from Wikipedia “HTML5 video is an element introduced in the HTML5 draft specification for the purpose of playing videos or movies [1], partially replacing the object element.”

A good look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video helps us gauge the vagueness of this new HTML 5 Video element – and there is a lot of uncertainty about it. A serious business decision cannot be taken based on what information we have today.

Google/Firefox/Mozilla/Opera seem to have agreed on using WebM format (a new video format http://webmproject.blogspot.com/) but what about Microsoft? Most of the corporate houses use MS Windows as the OS and IE as the browser. A lot of organizations don’t even allow installation of other web browsers because of tight integration that only IE provides with Active Directory Services.

HTML 5 on Mobile Devices and the envisaged lightweight DREAM-come-true type Web-browser: How many mobile or hand-held devices are available in the markets today that provide full support for HTML 4.01 and JavaScript? Most of the hand-held devices suffer from low computing capacity because of which some or the other HTML 4.01 feature or JavaScript feature aren’t available. Secondly, technically speaking, if there will ever be a browser with HTML 5 support (including video and all the promised goodies) it will be at least two times bulkier than today’s combination of browser and Flash. So, the entire idea of future’s lightweight web browser with HTML 5, ready for low computing capacity devices, is again questionable.

Are we back to where we began? Yes, we are. Weighing technical aspects too, HTML5 still does not have a fool-proof and water-tight case yet.

The web has gone though a metamorphosis in the last two decades to find glory in its present avatar. It is glorious indeed – Multiple browser options, varied platforms and a media-rich feel. For the learning industry, it is truly an era of looking forward to progress and innovation.

For developers, it has been good times as they have been given room to explore different mediums – including one that has shown immense success – Video. But with increased number of viewing devices, from the early desktops to laptops and now, smart-phones, there is more than one factor that influences e-learning developers’ choice of applications, software or standards used to build training.

The current debate between Flash and HTML5 rests largely on multi-media features. How do you make the choice, for both have its pros and cons? When faced with this dilemma, we debated internally on what’s best suited to create a successful training.

First and foremost, as always is the thumb rule in learning, Learner needs. If a media and interactivity rich training course is the need of the day then Flash is a comfortable choice today. But there has to be more to that decision than just familiarity with the platform. HTML5 is being hailed as equally competent in developing rich-media, adopted by Google and Apple. The list is getting longer, as HTML5 is an open-source standard. No third party plug-in is necessary to support it. This however, is generally not the problem for our learner group. With over 97% of market share (Source: http://statowl.com/plugin_overview.php), plug-in required for viewing Flash-developed content is already present on almost all PCs and laptops.

The question was what would best suit the end-user. HTML5 has to still take strides in creating a network of browser support. Right now, Chrome (Google) and Safari (Apple) support viewing of video developed with HTML5 (H.264). Firefox will most-probably support it in future and Internet Explorer 9.0 will too. But many users still use Internet Explorer 7 or below, and find it not necessary to upgrade. At over 35% of all web-browsing users (Source: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200904-201005-bar), this is not a paltry percentage! So Flash wins hands down in terms of available support.

The other side of the spectrum is the Client. Specifications always dictate that the best care be taken to ensure Digital Rights Management (DRM). With Flash, DRM is protected to a large extent – at least it is not as simple as right-clicking and hitting ‘save to’! DRM with HTML5 is not straightforward as it requires special servers and settings, not available to many developers. To save your content being illegally downloaded, Flash seems to be the better option again.

The other thread of debate that HTML5 is open-source while Flash is a propriety product. Well, for developers who have been using Flash ever since it was launched a decade back, this is not an issue.

So clearly, Flash won the case today. But the emphasis is on ‘today’. Learning is changing face, and as predicted by many experts from the industry, mobile learning will be next ‘big’ thing. HTML5 has a longer pros-list when talking about viewing web content on mobile phones. It ensures higher device-performance, enhancing battery life. Viewing Flash-based video on phones drains batteries, while HTML5 performs better in this aspect.

Web-kit, which is the base of the Safari browser of all Apple products, has been widely accepted by almost all mobile giants. Android’s browser runs on Web-kit, Nokia and Blackberry are also using it. This ensures wider support for content developed on HTML5 on mobile phones.  The problem of DRM is also countered, as downloading or saving content is a phenomenon mostly associated with the PC or laptop, not so much in mobiles.

Moving ahead as ‘e-learning’ comes closer to ‘mobile learning’ we might bring you our experiences with HTML5 as well. On the other hand, as we speak, Adobe is also making efforts to come to a closer compatibility to content on mobile phones. Our next update might talk on those developments and our experiences with them.

So it is best for us, as developers, to maintain our stand of what suits our Learner best. That will always be – where we begin!

Internet has had a profound impact on the way we interact and work. It started of as a medium to exchange information between computers. With increasing network speeds and wider penetration of Internet, software providers started moving their applications to the Web, and started offering their software’s as a service (SaaS). Organizations or individuals could now use enterprise level software’s for a small fee (or even for free) without having to install them on local infrastructure, and without worrying about how to maintain these applications.

But all this while there was almost no innovation on how hardware infrastructure was deployed or licensed. One either had to create an in-house data center to deploy and manage their software systems, or had to take servers on rent in a data-center managed by someone. In both cases one had to pay full server and bandwidth charges even if their applications were consuming only a fraction of these resources, or running for only few hours in a month.

Cloud Computing or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) changes all this. Using cloud infrastructure provided by service providers, such as Amazon or Microsoft Azure, you can now –

• Choose the server configuration for your needs
• Activate/deactivate it instantly and without any charges
• Increase/decrease number of server as per requirement – again without any charges
• And best of all, pay for only what you consume (e.g. pay only for bandwidth that you consumed and not for some flat GB’s of data transfer, or pay only for the duration when your cloud infrastructure was ON and not for the whole month etc.)

Difference between self-managed server infrastructure, servers rented from data center management companies, and cloud based infrastructure can be best explained using the taxi analogy I saw in rSmart’s video on cloud computing –

So a dedicated server infrastructure is like having a self-owned car, which is best option if you wish to have customized infrastructure, you know that you are going to use the infrastructure extensively, or your security regulations demand the servers to be situated in your premises or within your strict control. On the other hand, leasing infrastructure in a data center is like having a leased car, where someone else is managing the infrastructure for you, and you pay a fixed fees for your servers irrespective of it’s usage.It’s a good option if you want to avoid big capex, and want to have flexibility to change service providers or servers in case you are not satisfied with the performance. Cloud computing is like taking a taxi ride, pay for what you use and how much you use, and dynamically increase compute capacity by requisitioning more servers from the cloud service providers.

There is off-course perceived sense of loss of control and security when you are not hosting dedicated infrastructure at your own end, and the costs can also shoot quite a bit in cloud compute model if your solutions are bandwidth and/or I/O hungry. So one should be careful of these trade-offs when moving to cloud computing model.

And what can cloud computing mean for e-learning industry?

Learning management systems (LMS’s) are already made available in SaaS model by many LMS providers (including us). But for most LMS providers, cost structure for providing LMS in SaaS model is currently governed by ‘old’ way of server infrastructure management (in-house or rented), which is then as-is passed on to the customer.

With cloud computing option, LMS providers will be able to create different and more flexible licensing options, such as –

• Pay $x per user per course (of a certain size) irrespective of duration for which user is registered on the system
• Pay $y per user per assessment, where assessment duration is say 3 hours, and where user may come to the system at any point of time
• Pay $z for a surge in concurrent user load from say 100 to 500 for a short duration which may be because of a timed learning event

Essentially, true ‘pay-as-you-go’ model where customer is transparently charged for the infrastructure resources consumed by their users, instead of time linked flat fee for expected registered or concurrent user load.

Mostly when one budgets for a learning management system (LMS), major emphasis is only given on LMS license cost and annual maintenance cost. However, there are many other factors, such as system software’s, server hardware, and other operating expenses etc that can have a huge impact on your total cost of ownership.

Given below is table for calculating TCO for self-hosted LMS, and for LMS made available on SaaS (Software as a Service) model.

Before calculating TCO for a LMS, it would be good if you know or if you can guesstimate what is the kind of user load that you expect on the system, i.e. how many users would typically access the system at any given point of time. Tip – Based on our experience from Wizdom LMS installations, concurrent user (CCU) load typically ranges between 0.5 to 5% of registered user base.

Case 1: Client Hosts LMS on Own Premises

Items that go towards calculating TCO are –

Assuming it’s an annual license for LMS, your TCO for 3 years would be –

TCO = (a x 3) + b + c + d + (e x 3)

Case 2: LMS Licensed on SaaS Model

Calculating TCO for LMS taken on SaaS model is relatively easier. Using the above table only, TCO for 3 years in this case would be –

TCO = (a + 3) + d + (e x 3)

You can download the above calculator from this location – TCO_Calculator. Please do feel free to edit and share this calculator as you may wish.

Having used Agile methodology in various projects, I wanted to share my thoughts on the opportunities and challenges presented by this methodology.

What is Agile?

As per www.dictionary.com, word agile means ‘Quick and well-coordinated in movement’.

Applying this definition to IT development process, it would mean that the process should be -

• Quick to deliver results
• Efficiently coordinated to deliver best results

Let me further investigate ‘quick’ and ‘efficient’. What does ‘Quick’ means for IT development?  It is purely defined by the needs and nature of the business goals and aspirations. It can be 1 year for a research project Or 1 week for a vanilla LMS implementation.

The success of any IT development process is dependent on the seamless coordination among all stakeholders. So, a process being ‘efficient’ goes by default. The challenge is to measure the process success as being ‘efficient’ or ‘inefficient’ and the ability to introduce changes in the ongoing process to keep improving it to the Nth degree.

Agile methodology for software development attempts to achieve the ‘Quick’ and ‘Efficient’ traits by mandating the following key principles:

1. Break the project into number of small deliverables
2. Regular deliveries at predefined short time intervals
3. Regular feedback from key stakeholders on the deliveries
4. Keep adding to the list of deliverables as they are discovered during the development process
5. Re-plan as and when changes arrive or requested for
6. Ensure the availability of all important decision making stakeholders to make a confident ‘real time’ decision
7. Cut the communication time by conducting face to face conversations
8. Less focus on documentation/recording and more focus on ultimate deliverable
9. Always keep making progress despite ‘roadblocks’ by shifting to alternate work for the time when ‘roadblocks’ are dealt by ‘specialists’

To summarize, process should be flexible to adapt changes, iterative with N number of development cycles and minimize the communication related delays.

Benefits of Agile

These key principles immediately throw some excellent benefits over traditional approaches, such as:

• All stakeholders are apprised of project’s status at all times
• Helps visualize the final deliverable in early stages of development
• Gives a quick estimation of ‘How far are we from final product’
• Keeps the team on its toes and hence, competitive
• Reduces the ‘idle’ time to minimum and thus, increases resource utilization

Challenges of Agile Methodology

I do not doubt the realization of any of the ‘Agile’ benefits. However, after having worked in a complex and big development & implementation project using agile methodology, I have some concerns on ‘Where Agile can be best utilized’.

Here are some of the practical challenges which I feel constraints the use of Agile methodology.

1.    Quality, Cost, Time and Scope

As per PMI (Project Management Institute), changes to any of these constraints bring a change in one or more remaining ones.

Agile being flexible allows frequent changes in scope which means that Cost, Quality or Time has to change. In practice, majority of projects have fixed budget and a mandatory deadline (say, LMS deployment with custom data-flow and reporting mechanism for regulatory compliance).

Hence, even though a project follows agile methodology, at ‘certain point’ the scope changes have to cease.

The realization of this ‘certain time’ is the most difficult task. Do it any sooner than required and business looses the benefits of being agile and on the contrary, do it any later than required, and projects runs over budget or time.

2.    ‘Ready to use’ product

One of major benefits for agile is that ‘ready to use’ product with limited features is always available throughout the development cycle. Hence, if the project has to cut short due to any external constraints, business have a fall back product.

Again, from my personal experience, I do not believe that this benefit can be realized in practise for most of the development projects.

Majority of projects need performance testing and tuning. Basic principle of performance testing warrants a stable functional application to be tested on. An application under agile development process is always evolving and may have functional defects. Hence, performance testing can only be performed after substantial number of deliveries.

Hence, the deliverable is never in ‘ready to use’ form during the development stage unless it is performance tested. Like performance testing, there are many other work items which may continue well after development stage, such as:

• Data Migration
• Setting users in live system
• Security/Anti Hacking testing

And basically, anything to ‘implement’ the deliverables in Live Environment.

3.    Inability to ‘design’ for future requirements

Irrespective of best design models and most experienced design personnel on a project team, it is very hard to design a system on the basis of unseen requirements. This often leads to ‘rework’ at various stages in development and testing.

There was a major mandatory design change due to elaborated requirements during one of the development cycles of the project I worked with. The impact of this change was so big that 2 development cycles had to be used to fix the system as per new design.

4.    External and Internal Dependencies

Majority of projects have external dependencies which are out of control of core project team. External teams will not always follow the agile methodology and hence, will deliver at a certain point in time. Any dependant work can only be undertaken once external deliveries are made.

The problem arises when these dependencies are only discovered during the development process.

There can also be internal dependencies between the different agile teams working on same agile project. In one project we had 3 agile development teams. The selection of work items in an iteration was heavily dependent on the deliverables from other teams. This made planning each iteration very tough, and it needed huge coordination effort.

5.    Need of experts in agile team

Since, each iteration is for a small duration; it is must that each member of team must be an expert in their respective field. This is rarely a case in practise. Hence, often there is a danger to overrun the estimated time for work items.

Conclusion

• Though, agile offers several benefits to Business but at the same time it remains a very challenging task to be able to deliver an agile project successfully.
• The nature of project must be considered before the selection of methodology. In my experience it works well for small to medium projects, or implementations that require less product customizations.
• Some of the challenges I have mentioned can be addressed by better planning and experience.

Oh! You love Microsoft! – this is what a client’s IT Manager commented after looking at technology requirements sheet of Wizdom Web in a presentation last week (It’s built on .Net, and uses Windows Server, IIS, & MS SQL/Oracle as back-end platform). The presentation than briefly turned into a debate between open-source and proprietary systems.

Now, this was not the first time when someone asked me to compare open source vs. proprietary systems, and I am sure it won’t be the last. So I thought I will try to be as objective as possible (even though we sell proprietary LMS) and present how I see open source vs. proprietary LMS debate. So here goes ..

I neither love nor hate proprietary or open source systems. Our decisions to adopt a particular technology or platform either for development or internal use is governed by what works best for our customers and for us. For example, we use Microsoft platform for Wizdom Web, but use Linux based servers for our network management. We use Wizible (a proprietary tool) for project management, but use Bugzilla (open source) to manage internal QA process and WordPress (open source) for blogging.

So did we choose these open source technologies because they provided source code and theoretically we could modify these tools? Or did we choose them because they were free?

No, we chose them because they were the best fit for our requirements (and we have never felt the need to modify source code inspite of having in-house development team). Similarly, we chose proprietary technologies that we use because they were the best fit (read proven, robust, scalable, and with clear road-map that mapped to our growth needs) for us or for our customers

How about open source vs. proprietary LMS’s?

Questions one should evaluate –

1. Is my organization practically ever going to setup an IT team to manage or customize the system?
2. Does the future road-map of open source system map with my industry/domain growth needs?
3. Can I manage without active support?
4. If I am getting the open source system customized, will it still be able to support enhancements that will be made to the system in future (remember with open source systems the development community would not know how you have customized your system, and hence won’t make future enhancements that may fit the customized LMS)?

I generally recommend that if customer’s LMS needs are such that they can be met by out-of-the-box product, and if they have an IT team or access to pool of programmers (such as students) to manage and support the system then it makes absolute sense to go for an open source LMS.

However, if you are an organization who wants LMS to become integral part of talent development plan (read easy integration with ERP’s/HRMS’s, usage in competency management, skill gap analysis, succession planning etc), or if you are getting the system heavily customized, or if you don’t want to setup a dedicated support team for LMS then seriously consider proprietary system that best matches your usage scenario.

I raised the question of domain needs above, because most of the open source LMS’s have been designed with education domain in mind and their growth continues to be influenced by the needs of the same domain. This can be easily ascertained by looking at the terminology used in demo sites, and by going through future road-map of open source LMS’s. So in my honest opinion, they are not the best fit (not in their current form, and not atleast with next couple of releases) for a medium to large size corporate implementation.

Now, the million dollar question – How do Open Source & Proprietary LMS’s compare on Cost Front?

Assuming that open source LMS matches your objectives and organizational structure, then yes, if you have small to medium sized implementation then certainly open source LMS’s (even if moderately customized) are much more cost effective compared to licensed proprietary systems.

However, if you have medium to large scale implementation, then the license price of the LMS itself is not so significant component of the entire implementation (or atleast not so significant component with our and many other good LMS’s license prices).

Given below is a case in example, where we implemented Wizdom Web for 7,500 users for a client that’s spread across the country. I have compared this implementation with a popular open source system (OSS), and I have assumed certain efforts for OSS customizations based on my understanding of that system (Note: Costs are approximate, and currency has been converted to USD for wider audience reach).

Note: Common Customizations- Reports, UI Customizations. Additional Customizations for OSS- Categorization & Assignment of Courses Based on Department/Location, Configurable Work-flow based Enrollment Approvals

Given below is a graphical representation of total cost of ownership (TCO) over the life of LMS license.

As you can see, over a period of time costs converge and can actually be more for OSS depending upon support & enhancement requirements. For bigger implementations of over 30k users, the license cost is even less of a factor, and in such cases the most critical factor is how robust the system is, how well the LMS partner can support you throughout the LMS life cycle, and what is the proposed road-map of the LMS system and whether that aligns with your domain needs or not.

So this how I see open source vs. proprietary LMS debate. I would love to receive your criticism and feedback.

Apple launched iPad yesterday amidst lot of hype. It was slated to be Kindle killer and a serious threat to Netbooks. We try to analyze where would iPad fit in, and whether it will be for elearning what iPod was for music.

iPad Vs Kindle

First some facts - I have compared iPad – Wi-Fi + 3G model with Kindle DX as they are the comparative models amongst various versions made available from both the providers –

Analysis –

• If one is an avid book reader & is going to use the device primarily for reading eBooks only, then Kindle would make more sense – its display technology is better, weighs & costs less (Kindle also has a base version which is smaller, weighs 0.29kg & costs $259), and has huge content repository.
• However, if one is looking to do more with the handheld device than just reading books, such as browse web, emailing, view videos, listen to music, and make presentations etc, than in that case iPad beats Kindle hands down.
• iPad also has access to Apple’s application store, which has tens of thousands of apps which can be downloaded on to iPad

Take on iPad Vs Kindle – iPad is not a Kindle killer and both would fight for top two eBook reader spots. iPad would however, certainly hurt new eBook readers that are now coming in the market.

iPad & Its Impact on e-Learning

Apple’s new device was also seen as something that could have given mobile learning a big push. Will it? I have my doubts. My reasons -

No Support for Flash – Like iPhone, even iPad doesn’t support Flash and there is no mention of when it will be supported. Majority of the elearning course-ware however gets published in Flash and no support for flash is a major irritant for rolling out courses on iPad, as few would make the investment to adopt new technology.

It’s Not a Netbook – iPad doesn’t support multi-tasking, is not a phone, has upper limit to disk space (64 GB), doesn’t have an inbuilt camera, and doesn’t support MS Office (does support MS Office’s formats though) among other things.  All this would put iPad in entertainment/lifestyle product category, and would thus not get endorsed by Management/IT departments for corporate use.

iPad would have limited impact on mlearning unless some of the parameters mentioned above change, either as a result of technological advancements over next couple of years or as upgrades from Apple.

Mobile learning (m-learning) has been a buzz word in L&D circles for quite some time now. It has long been projected as the next big thing that’s going to hit elearning industry as there are more mobiles than laptops in the world, people spend lot of time travelling and hence have free time to learn, workforce in field doesn’t always have access to computers and so on.

But inspite of sincere efforts by organizations across the globe, m-learning has never taken off in real sense, and has largely been limited to pilot runs or sending information chunks or quizzes over SMS. I believe primary reasons behind this are –

1. Mobiles come in all kind of screen sizes, which means content has to be optimized for multiple sizes to reach a wider audience set. During optimization you have to sacrifice lot of functionalities/animations etc to fit in the given screen sizes. Not only is this exercise capital intensive but it also drastically impacts learner experience.
2. Screen sizes are too small and even with optimized courses learners find the whole experience too cumbersome

But all this can change with Pico Projectors. These are very small projectors (size of a mobile device) that can create a 40” to 100” wide projection on any kind of surface.

Currently these projectors are being sold as standalone accessories and can be attached to mobile devices, iPods, and PDA’s. But phone manufacturers have already started embedding Pico projectors in mobile phone itself.

It’s predicted that in next few years ‘projector phones’ would become as popular as ‘camera phones’ are today. Now that would open up very interesting opportunities in lot of domains including learning & development.

Content providers would have to no longer squeeze content for small screen sizes, thus providing the same kind learning experience as in web environment.

Learners would be able to project learning material on any surface – table surface, wall, or on someone’s back! This would take away the biggest resistance that mobile learning faces today, that is of fiddling with annoyingly small screens.

This technology can also prove to be a boon for teachers and students in less developed areas where access to computers is limited. With a ‘projector phone’ and course material pre-loaded in SD cards, a teacher would be able to offer latest learning aids to students in remotest parts of the country!

How do you think this can impact m-learning?

Software as a Service (SaaS) has fast emerged as a huge value proposition for people using software. Not only does it drastically cut down upfront capital expenditure for customers, it also takes away lot of headache related to maintaining the software and hardware resources.

We at G-Cube are experiencing a definite shift from ‘owned’ software to SaaS model first hand as more and more of our customers demand the learning system to be hosted and managed by us. Here is some insight on how Wizdom Learning Suite’s implementations have been distributed between two models in this fiscal year (1st April 08 onwards) –

Some observations & deductions based on the graph shared above and historic data available for last year –

1. Last year only 10% of Wizdom implementations were in SaaS model, which has now increased to 33%. There is thus a definite shift towards SaaS that is only going to increase in coming years.
2. As of now only SME’s are going in for SaaS model, whereas large organizations still prefer to host the system on their own infrastructure that is managed by their IT teams. However, I must point out that in some of our upcoming implementations even large organizations are seriously considering SaaS, and I believe this graph would look very different by end of the year.
3. I believe with e-learning entering into ‘Early Majority’ phase in most geographies, more and more small & medium organizations (along with larger organizations ofcourse) would start using e-learning to train their staff and to build new businesses around e-learning. This would lead to further growth of SaaS model in future.

So why are SME’s opting for SaaS and why are large organizations not so inclined towards the same? Here are some factors that play a key role in decision making process –

As is evident from the table given above, SaaS model is particularly suitable for organizations/businesses who wish to start quickly with minimal investment, don’t want to setup their own IT team, and who don’t have too many customization or integration requirements.

On the other hand ‘Owned’ model is preferred by organizations who have IT infrastructure and support system already in place, who wish to get the learning system tightly integrated with their existing software systems so that data can seamlessly flow between different systems, and who may like to have the flexibility to modify the learning system to suit their process flows rather than making a huge workforce adapt to the laid down structure of the LMS.

Both SaaS & Owned models have their own pros and cons, but for me odds seem to be stacked in favour of SaaS model for the simple reason that it gives you the agility to move fast and the flexibility to change the underlying system with minimal cost impact.

I’ll be interested in finding out what has been the experience of other LMS providers, and what people think in general about this topic…

(Mr. Manish Gupta is Head – Business Development at G-Cube)

With growing realization of benefits of e-learning more and more organizations are moving towards adopting e-learning. One of the first steps in this journey is to acquire a Learning Management System, which can turn out to be quite a daunting task if done without proper research or guidance. What all features do I need? Have I missed asking some important questions? What are various challenges one faces during implementation?

Here is some help.First, let’s take a look at what does a Learning Management System (or LMS in short) consist of with help of this diagram –

As you can see there are varied set of features available in today’s LMS which cater to different business requirements. In addition, talent management features are now being introduced on top of LMS that allow HR department to manage resources from ‘Hire to Retire’ stage.

Your first step thus should be to list down “specific needs” of your organization, share it with various stakeholders, get their feedback and create a functionality requirement document specific to your company.

The reason I have highlighted specific needs above is because it’s very easy to get bogged down by all the sample RFP’s and checklists available on Net and loose focus on what you actually need (which actually depends on how you conduct your business and no sample RFP can capture that).

To capture YOUR needs, use examples/use-cases in the requirement document. For example, do you plan to group users together based on their departments or locations, do you want the managers to track their team’s progress, do you plan to give conditional access of catalog to different users etc. The more precise you are in capturing your requirements, easier it would be to actively participate in LMS demos and finally zeroing down on the system that best suits your needs.

Along with functionality requirements, these are some of the things you should take care of in the evaluation process –

1. Standard Compliance – SCORM or AICC. SCORM is more popular among the two and the LMS should be at-least SCORM 1.2 compatible if not SCORM 2004 (SCORM is a standard which lets courseware and LMS talk to each other, and allows you to seamlessly host third-party content or content created by popular content authoring tools on to the LMS – more on SCORM in next post). Ask for a SCORM conformance report of LMS for verification. Other standards to consider are QTI (allows you to import assessments created from 3rd party QTI compliant tools into LMS), and PENS (allows the LMS to automatically pick up courseware published by PENS compliant LCMS or content authoring tools).
2. Content Compatibility – Check whether the LMS is compatible with the courses created by your content authoring tool (s) you plan to use for courseware generation. Ask for sample courses published by your chosen tools to be uploaded on to the LMS. It is important because even though LMS’s and Content Authoring Tools may claim to be SCORM/AICC compliant they may not always be compatible with each other due to different interpretation of standards by each party. Yes, it’s sad, but that’s how it is.
3. Flexibility – LMS should offer you the flexibility of choosing only the modules you need without having to pay for the rest. Any decent LMS nowadays is built in modular fashion thus providing you the option to ‘Switch ON’ a feature as and when you need it. So don’t let the salesperson sell you anything you don’t need at this moment!
4. Scalability – You should have the ability to scale up the LMS as your user base grows. LMS should not only be able to support large user bases, it should do so efficiently. An in-efficient LMS would start consuming disproportionate amount of hardware resources as your user base grows thus increasing your capital expenditure and maintenance cost. You should therefore ask for hardware requirements for your anticipated user base, and what would be the additional resource requirement with increasing user base.
5. Support for ‘Other’ Content Types – Check whether the LMS supports common content types such as PDF, Word Documents, Flash Files, HTML, and Videos.
6. Intuitive User Interface – The LMS should have easy to navigate user interface so that users can easily log-on, navigate through their courses, and see their progress reports. Ask for demo learner logins to get a feel of how easy to use interface actually is. Also ask if the interface can be customized for different user groups, departments, or customers – is it inbuilt functionality, or would you have to pay professional charges for the same.
7. Reporting – Besides comprehensive reports, your LMS should give you the ability to export reports to XLS or some other common format, and to take a print of the same. You should also have the flexibility of applying different kind of filters on the same report so that you can generate the report which is most relevant for you.

Ok, so now you know what all is included in an LMS and what are some of the important questions to be asked during analysis phase. But what about the challenges you may face during and post implementation? Here are few things you should keep in mind -

• Have IT guys on your side – IT department will be a key stakeholder during discussions with vendors and post implementation as well. So you must involve them from the start – ask them for their recommendations on vendors, involve them in demonstrations, get them to meet short-listed vendors to work out hardware requirements and its availability/additional cost estimate and integration requirements with existing systems.
• Follow Course Rollout Plan Religiously – I know it sounds elementary, but you can get so caught up in LMS implementation that you may loose sight of how course development is getting along. If you are buying a library then check some of the courses on LMS sandbox to ensure everything works together.
• Communication Plan – You need to put on the Marketing Hat for some time and create a buzz about the new initiative. Make some fliers, e-mail announcements etc. and send them out at regular intervals. Create some reward programs to get people to the LMS.
• Feedback – Check with different stakeholders about course uptake and user experience, and fine-tune the courses or the system to better your service.

Have more questions? Please don’t hesitate to call us.

(Manish Gupta is Head – Business Development at G-Cube)