In an increasingly digital world, having the right platform with the ability and agility to help IT teams in the education sector serve their users more effectively and efficiently is essential. Singapore Management University’s great transformation journey is one to emulate. In our session (https://youtu.be/GoFUeK8x8sY), Acquia and SMU will discuss the key aspects of open source technology with special attention on simple strategies to improve your understanding of how it impacts your institution. In this 45-minute session, we will share: - Why should Institutes of Higher Learning use open source technology? - The story behind SMU’s transformation journey - Fireside chat with Wee Sen and Tony (Live Q&A session)

1. August 2020
Why Open Source is
the Smart choice for
Higher Education

2. Acquia empowers higher education
institutions to respond to the rapidly
shifting demands to attract and engage
students and alumni through personalized
digital experiences.

3. PWC Perspectives in Higher Education 2018
“Each institution has to be
able to better communicate
their value proposition due to
the increased competition
and awareness of the student
as a consumer.”
3

4. Online experiences must
provide a robust and
compelling overview of the
student experience.
Why it matters:
﹣ Short term inability to recruit
leading student candidates.
﹣ Long term inability to keep
existing students, or recruit
new students as the need for
successful hybrid learning
approaches emerges.
﹣ Loss of confidence in
institution’s responsiveness to
COVID crisis among existing
and prospective students.
Does your school’s digital
experience “bring the
campus” to life - for both
online and in-person
learning opportunities?

5. Can your teams work
together to introduce
new, innovative
experiences - quickly?
Fragmented, legacy
processes and antiquated
systems lead to disrupted
online experiences,
production delays, and plenty
of challenges to security and
scalability.
Why it matters:
﹣ Lost opportunities to build
audience and generate
engagement
﹣ Cost of maintaining legacy
systems becomes greater than
the cost of developing innovation.
﹣ Unpredictable costs in building
new applications, as there is no
approach to developing
innovation.

6. Institutions must overcome
ingrained, separated
processes and move to
collaborative systems that
improve experiences
across the entire student
journey.
Why it matters:
﹣ Inability to drive engagement
with students across each
stage of their relationship with
the school.
﹣ Loss of revenue associated
with alumni donations.
﹣ Cost of curating and
maximizing student data
increases with more and more
data.
How complete a picture
do you have of your
students from recruiting
to post-graduation?

7. What are your
administrators and
faculty doing to help
protect sensitive
student information?
Institutions must
demonstrate that they are
getting ahead of the risks
of managing PII
Why it matters:
﹣ Exposure to govt penalties
related to non-compliance
with regulatory requirements,
including removal of funding.
﹣ Risk to brand as a trusted
leader.
﹣ Innovation slows due to
inability to adopt secure
cloud technologies.

9. The Leading Provider of cloud-based, data-driven
journey technology to build, manage and activate
digital experiences at scale
Who We Are
30+
Fortune 100
companies
are customers
780+
Employees
2000
Global
partners
3,000+
customers,
including 1,600
enterprise
94%
Customer
satisfaction
rating
Largest
Open source
community

10. ©2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
RELIABILITY ACROSS A
UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
10
Challenge: Internal infrastructure and databases introduced
unpredictable IT costs and prevented the web services team
from focusing on platform innovation.
GW needed a digital experience platform that guaranteed
both site reliability and operational efficiency to maintain the
premium service its community expects.
Solution: Drupal CMS, Acquia Cloud Site Factory
Results:
300+ sites migrated to ACSF in seven weeks.
90% decrease in time required to provision a new site
100% recorded site uptime

11. ©2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
TAKING BACK
CONTROL
11
Challenge: Outdated content management tools and a
proprietary CMS complicated site management and
prevented Bentley University from being able to inform
students, faculty, and prospective applicants in an engaging
manner online.
Solution: Drupal CMS, Acquia Cloud
Results:
● 70,000 pages across the university’s site were
migrated to Drupal.
● A small web team can now facilitate content updates
from more than 150 editors across campus.
● Estimated savings of 75% in comparison to previous
investments in content management systems.

12. 12 ©2016 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary12 ©2016 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary©2017 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Using Decoupled Drupal
to Power a Campus
– Campus-wide screens and signage
– Reaching classrooms, dorms and public
buildings
– Integrated with the University web platform
– Hundreds of sites delivered
– Replaces proprietary hardware/software
solution with a real-time Drupal solution

13. ©2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Higher Education sector experience
13

14. ©2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Higher Education sector experience
14

15. 27 AUGWEE SEN GOH | SINGAPORE MANAGEMENT UNIVERSITY
WHY OPEN SOURCE IS THE
SMART CHOICE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

16. Focus on Management, Social Sciences, Technology and their intersections.
10,000 Full-time enrolment students, 1,200 faculty and staff
SINGAPORE MANAGEMENT UNIVERSITY

17. www.smu.edu.sg
130+
SITES
3.2M+
MONTHLY PAGEVIEWS
35K+
CONTENT NODES
400+
CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS

19. PAIN

20. 2000 2003

21. 2008
2000
2012

22. 2013 2018-

23. EX-CMS // ACCESS ON CAMPUS ONLY

24. EX-CMS // WHICH FILE SHOULD I EDIT?

25. EX-CMS // UNRELIABLE PUBLISHING

26. EX-CONTENT AUTHORING TOOL // NOT FOR BUSINESS USERS

28. SOLUTION

29. WHY OPEN SOURCE
MODERN
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
EDUCATION
HIGHER
ORDER WORK
TOTAL COST OF
OWNERSHIP

30. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT // ACQUIA DRUPAL CERTIFICATIONS

31. WYSIWYG MODULE LIBRARY
CONTENT MANAGEMENT
SECURE
MOBILE READY
DEV FRIENDLY
SCALABLE, FLEXIBLEWHY

32. CONTENT
MANAGEMENT

33. WHY

34. DEV, STAGE, PROD, RA

35. UPTIME MONITORING

36. STACK METRICS

37. DB BACKUP

38. SCHEDULED JOBS

39. ACQUIA INSIGHT

40. PERMISSION CATEGORIES
Administration
Cron
Databases
Domains
Insight
Logs
Pipelines
SSH Keys
Search
Server Administration
Support
Workflow
60
PERMISSION TOGGLES
ACQUIA INSIGHT
CUSTOMISABLE ROLES

41. OTHER SMU USES OF DRUPAL
EMPLOYEE
RECOGNITION
CAMPUS MAPS

42. INTEGRATIONS WITH OTHER SYSTEMS/SERVICES
SSO + MULTI-FACTOR
AUTHENTICATION
FACULTY PROFILEFAST COURSE SEARCH

43. FUTURE

44. WEB
PERSONALISATION
LOW CODE
SITE BUILDING
& EDITING

45. LOW CODE SITE BUILDING & EDITING

46. LOW CODE SITE BUILDING & EDITING

47. WEB PERSONALISATION

48. WEE SEN GOH
SMU
27 AUGTHANK YOU

49. ©2018 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
FIRESIDE CHAT:
Why Open Source is the
Smart choice for Higher
Education
Wee Sen & Tony