MAC turned upside down

CASMAC (Core Australian Specification for Management and Administrative Computing) was the Australian equivalent of the MAC Initiative and was born out of very similar intentions - to see if universities could collaborate successfully in the development and management of administrative and management computing systems to support core university business.

The Australian initiative consisted of two 'families' - one Oracle based, the other a Powerhouse Solution proposed by Coulson Heron Associates (CHA). Again the initiative was sponsored by Central Government and in the Australian case 31 out of a possible 37 Universities participated in the Project (the remaining universities made their own system development arrangements). By June 1993 there were two companies involved in the initiative - both of them owned entirely by the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC). UniPower (based on Powerhouse and Cognos) was established by the 19 of the Universities and UniOn (based on Oracle relational database management and technology) was established by the other 12 universities.

UniPower ran into difficulties very quickly having signed a contract with CHA for the delivery of a single application to cover all 6 areas included on the system specification based on MAC. The MAC software was not easily transferable to the Australian context, it was also quickly apparent that the task was a lot greater than originally envisaged. UniPower and CHA attempted to resolve the difficulties experienced in order to provide an appropriate system for the Australian HE Sector requirements, unfortunately the results were not successful and by 1997 UniPower decided they had to terminate the contract with CHA resulting in a lengthy and expensive legal action and counteraction which finally led to an out-of-court settlement. UniPower effectively ceased operations in 1997 and finally closed down in December 1998.

The UniOn story is very different. The company did not enter into a contract with Oracle as they realised that it would not be possible at that stage for Oracle to deliver a fully-integrated MAC-based solution. UniOn felt that the CASMAC specification worked on a high level but did not have the degree of detail required. UniOn therefore drew up their own detailed specification of requirements. Having established the requirements they then put out invitation to tenders from Oracle and SCT Banner - neither of whom could meet the requirements. UniOn had a rethink about the appropriate way to progress things and opted to purchase systems where available in the market (eg human resources and finance systems) and supplement those by commissioning new systems to fill the gaps (eg student system) and develop the necessary interfaces between the systems.

Deakin University, one of the UniOn universities decided to produce their own student information system, it was agreed within UniOn that Deakin would build the system to the UniOn specifications and make it available under licence to other Universities within UniOn. The resulting system became known as Callista.

By 1997 Deakin University had established a wholly owned and controlled subsidiary company, known as Deakin Software Services, to concentrate full-time on the development and production of Callista. Alongside this UniOn instigated work on several interfaces and on an executive information system (EIS).

The developments were successful, so much so that the EIS and Callista both won major industry awards and Callista was acquired by Oracle US for development as Oracle Student System (to be available outside of Australia and New Zealand - Callista held on to exclusive rights for supplying to Australia and New Zealand).

Deakin Software Services later rebranded as Callista Software Services and became a very successful education software developer in Australia. In mid-2001, Callista entered a partnership arrangement with Charles Darwin University to extend Callista student management system to meet the needs of the VET (Vocational Education and Training) sector so that it covered the whole of the Australian tertiary education sector.

In 2004 a set of higher education reforms resulted in the need to renegotiate arrangements with clients in order to deliver new software functionality. This served as a catalyst to review the way agreements were created and managed.

'The result was the creation of the Callista Service Agreement (CSA): the basis of a unique contractual relationship specially tailored to the higher education sector, which operates on a collaborative basis, rather than the typical adversarial customer/supplier arrangements common to the information technology industry.'

In effect Callista had come of age as a shared service.

The Callista Shared Service (quotes from Callista website):

'Our collaborative contractual arrangement with our participating institutions offers institutions unique benefits derived through participation in sourcing student system capability, vastly different to the traditional model.'

'This model enables the participants to share collective insight and expertise to define and refine business functionality, develop a business case and implement the concepts in a shorter timeframe.'

'... traditional IT vendors encourage user groups, but only at a suggestion box level.'

'Our planning processes enable our participants to dictate development priorities and cost allocation.'

'Ultimately, the Australian taxpayer is benefiting from the lower total cost of ownership of Callista and its unique shared service model.'