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releases every 12 to 18 months. Usually, that causes you to clus- ter your training into a small time window for staff, part- ners or even volunteers. If you have to ensure
that you had the com- puter resources to handle those situa- tions, you would have to acquire the num- bers of servers required to handle that peak load. Those servers would now have to be a perma- nent part of your installation, including your on-site support and maintenance routines. That's not the case in a ven-
dor-hosted scenario. Basically, the vendor reallocates content, reporting and other servers to accommodate your fluctu- ations. Thus, you're only paying for what you need, when you need it. And of course that transitions beyond just the hardware to include I.T. people and server software resources.
face is the model they use for pricing. The industry has grown up around per-seat or user subscription models. Although those still exist today, and even work for some of us, for others with extended enterprise char- ters or seasonal type requirements, it can be a nightmare. Take a new product release where thousands of partners and customers have to be trained in addition to your inter- nal staff. Or consider tax preparation disas- ter relief. Pricing on a per-seat basis is just as bad as having to maintain large server farms year round, when you might only need them for a one- to two-month period. So what are the emerging solutions? The
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way vendors are getting around these issues is to come up with per-use pricing models. For instance, one vendor only charges for class registrations. So instead of having to pay for large numbers of user seats throughout the year, you might go from a monthly run rate of 1,000 class reg-
New Pricing Models - One of the biggest issues that vendors and clients have to
Vendors seem more than
willing to put many require- ments and
capabilities into their service-
level agreements with you.
istrations for 10 months, and in the remaining two months, you might spike to 10,000 class registrations. In other words, vendors are finding
ways to make some larger fixed costs move into the variable category. That's
something the user community has been seeking for quite some time.
OTHER CARE AND FEEDING CONSIDERATIONS
Some cloud vendors are providing global cloud capabilities, complete with multiple secure data centers around the world. This means that your team doesn't have to labor over compliance with emerging standards like SAS 70 Type II and EU Safe Harbor certifica- tions. In the long run, that will make it easier to scale to a global foot- print. And lastly, vendors
seem more than willing to put a lot of these requirements and capabilities into their service level
agreements with you. Many are not only willing to guarantee uptime in their agreements, but also redundancy require- ments, multiple internet backbones, phys- ical security, and rapid disaster recovery metrics. similar groups.
CONCLUSIONS
Cloud LMS solutions may be a viable route, especially in today's economy.
It
may free up your time to focus on your primary learning missions. Keep the above list in mind if you decide to go the "on-premise" route. These will be some of the same criteria that you will need to consider with your own internal support teams. In fact, it wouldn't be unusual in some enterprises to actually have these requirements in writing with their own support teams. With what we've uncovered, we recom-
mend that you take another look at the cloud LMS solution. It not only seems like a very viable route, especially in today's uncertain economy, it seems to free up a lot of your time to focus on your primary learning mission.
-Joe DiDonato, is editor at large at Elearning! Media Group. As former CEO of Interwise and CLO at PeopleSoft and Countrywide, Joe is expert a evaluating learning technology's impact on learning outcomes. Contact Joe at jdidonato@2elearning.com
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