Subject: Evaluations of uPortal and Columbia's Content Management Suite
From: David Walker <david.walker at ucop.edu>
To: Mark Askren <maskren at uci.edu>,
    Barbara Morgan <barbm at uclink.berkeley.edu>,
    Robert Brandriff <bob.brandriff at ucop.edu>,
    Marina Arseniev <marsenie at uci.edu>,
    kent at ucla.edu,
    tmathis at its.ucsf.edu,
    John McCleary <jmccleary at ucsd.edu>,
    GForman at its.ucsf.edu,
    David.Walker at ucop.edu
Cc: JOG-L at ucop.edu
Date: 17 Jan 2003 14:24:16 -0800

People,

As discussed at this week's JOG meeting, I will be convening a group of people to evaluate uPortal and Columbia University's uPortal-based Content Management Suite (CuCMS), using the criteria that were used last year in our RFP for commercial portal and content management products.  The intent is to see if either or both of these should be adopted as lower-cost alternatives to the commercial products, given the current budget situation.

I'd like your thoughts as to what the outcome of this evaluation should be.  My initial thought is that it should be similar, but not necessarily as formal or labor intensive, as that done for the RFP:
  1. An assessment of the minimal acceptability of these products for the University (I.e., is it worth pursuing either of these any further?)
  2. An evaluation of the "quality" of these products, particularly in comparison with the commercial products from the RFP
  3. An estimate of the four-year cost of using these products
Let me know, though, if you have other ideas.  Also, are there other (low purchase cost) systems that we should evaluate?

Background information on uPortal and CuCMS can be obtained from:
uPortal:  http://mis105.mis.udel.edu/ja-sig/uportal/
CuCMS:  http://wwwa.ais.columbia.edu/sws/portal/cms-slides/
uPortal is used by many institutions for their enterprise portals.  CuCMS is less mature, but could mature over time, and might be a way for us to get started in content management without as much of the startup overhead of a more complete system.

In the interest of keeping this moving, please let me know sometime next week if you're interested in participating.

David Walker