If I were tasked with implementing an LMS for a Fortune 500 company, my first step would be to go through the RFP process to find a vendor that will ensure a successful deployment. Price and flexibilty would be factors, but the factor that I would weight the highest would be whether or not a vendor has demonstrated that they have successfully integrated and maintained LMS solutions with companies comparable to my own.

Open source systems have the benefits of being customizable and potentially cheaper (once implemented), but estimates surrounding cost and implementation timeframes are difficult to quantify — especially with the unknowns of introducing an unproven technology into an established IT environment.

That being the case, if a vendor offering an Open Source solution was unable to show me demonstrated success, I would go with an off-the-shelf solution that would allow me to benchmark, and therefore better estimate costs, deployment timeframes, maintaince requirements, FTE requirements, Technical Specifications, etc.

Most companies in search of an LMS find themselves researching commercial vendors who have lots of advertising and marketing dollars. These companies come upon sales reps that are well trained, who know clearly that if the companies were to discover the virtues of free open source LMS, their chances of getting an expensive signed contract would be significantly reduced.

Now that more companies understand Open Source LMS, it is my opinion that the future of incredibly expensive commercial LMS products is limited.
Organizations who’ve found themselves with bulky systems that they’ve made limited use of are anxious to move on to free open source where they can choose the aspects of the system they want and the reports that are relevant to the way they do business. Most of the reports available to these companies are never utilized! You are simply buying an expensive system that’s not worth the money.

Do we need advocates for free Open Source LMS? Well…We need to change our concept of products and services available online that don’t cost money. Not an easy switch for some people.

However, if you are concerned with your company’s bottom line you surely need to discover ways to do business in the most cost effective way. Free is very cost effective and may leave additonal resources available for other things. How I wish I knew then…what I know now…

One question I’d like to hear more about: how important is it to have someone in your organization dedicated to your LMS – open source or commercial?