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#access2009pei – Roy Tennant & Mike Rylander – ILS stuff

1 Oct 09

Roy Tennant

ILS in the Sky with Diamonds

description here

Many of our systems and services are moving into the “cloud”. Moving library data/apps to the network level at web scale. “Cloud computing” opportunities. COmputing tasks move from in-house servers to the net. Incorporates infrastructure, platform, and software as services. Low barriers to entry, pay as you go, no need for local server capacity, automatic software upgrades, saves staff. Drawbacks: lack of complete control, reliance on network connectivity, data held by a third party.

Amazon’s web-scale value proposition: most orgs spend 70% on infrastructure. Attempt to flip that: spend 30% on infrastructure, 70% on initiative.

One library example is OLE Project, ground-up new design for an ILS including workflows for all tasks envisioned in new system. Tennant not sure if this project has new funding, at the modelling stage. Another example is the Extensible Cataloging Project.

OCLC believes libraries have too many systems to support, too much invested in maintenance, a fragmented web presence, and lost opportunities for leveraging common data. There’s growing dissatisfaction with existing options, very few alternatives. Starting to see some real choices, finally!

OCLC is uniquely positioned to get into this stuff.
– > 1M libraries worldwide, > 5K transactions per second
– OCLC thinks this could all be done with a handful of commodity servers. Some nice graphics on simplifying he mess of siloed systems we deal with
– how much of our data could be shared, in what ways? vendor data, e.g.

A next-gen LMS
– supports all library management functins
– scalable and 100% web based
– reduced total cost of ownership
– unified platform for print/electronic
– flexible, customizable, but not unique
– network effects: application sharing, data registries

Responsive, scalable, fault tolerant, agile, suitable for public consumption (web services!), integrates with existing OCLC stuff

There’s a Web-scale management strategic steering advisory committee (or sumthin); anticipate rolling out a product in 2011.

Data: intent on making workflows more efficient, allow more intelligent CM decisions. The library who add’s data, owns the data. What goes in must come out. Leverage the power of WorldCat….

Mike Rylander

OS ILS

Without open software, the knowledge of how to read formats in which open data are stored will be forgotten. Even MARC will die!

OS ILS advantages:
– ROI – Evergreen an order of magnitude cheaper
– leverage with proprietary vendors
– control, over the code, the data, and the direction
– ideology a very good match with libraries

Next big things
– Cloud computing: using other peoples computers, learning not to waste computing resources
– Software as a service: hosting with a service provider, on virtual servers – BUT you don’t get to write the software
– Platform as a service: hosting with a service provider, on virtual servers – BUT you can only run apps targeted at a specific framework

Evergreen is SOA, SaaS(able), PaaS(ish)

Could we leverage the scaling features of Evergreen to build a community owned, run, and maintained PaaS cloud? Vision of each of us running one or two commodoty servers talking to each other over the internet, would immediately become the largest Evergreen instance in the world. PINES has 20 servers, never go over 25% utilization.

Posted by pzed on October 1, 2009 at 10.15pm
Categories: access 2009, conferences, libraries, twitter

Comments on "#access2009pei – Roy Tennant & Mike Rylander – ILS stuff"

One small clarification. Selected roll-out of OCLC’s web-scale management services will begin in OCLC’s Fiscal Year 2011, which begins July 1, 2010. Full-scale roll-out will occur in calendar year 2011.

Information about the Advisory Council can be found here:
http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/releases/200941.htm

Posted by Andrew Pace on October 2, 2009 at 5.53pm :: link

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