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Best-of-Breed Strategy

The University would contract on a case-by-case basis with a variety of vendors as needed to meet requirements for new applications. For each project implementation, requirements would be defined and a vendor selection would be made based upon the degree to which these requirements were met. If no viable vendor was found, the software would be developed in-house. In evaluating software vendors, little, if any, consideration would be given to the potential of the vendor to supply other software to the University. Also, incompatibilities with the existing supported technical environment and machine-to-user interfaces would be tolerated to a great extent. While this approach would add to the already frustrating array of methods for inputting transactions to and retrieving information from administrative applications, the University would continue its Web-based electronic forms and Information Warehouse strategies and possibly begin other strategies to help isolate at least casual users from these differences. The level of complexity in the technical environment supported by the University would unavoidably increase.

Some of the expected benefits of this approach are:

• Maximized opportunity to satisfy requirements for individual business areas.
• Majority of software investments not tied to a single vendor.
• Potentially greater flexibility in scheduling certain application implementations (would not be constrained by a vendor partner's schedule for new software development)