B-schools take cost-cutting measures to digital level

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Bangalore: Taking the cost-cutting measures to a digital level, premier B-schools in India have leveraged the use of technology in course administration and improved student services. They are also collaborating with several foreign institutions to execute the cost-cutting steps. "We are already using open source called Moodle to teach, to put course material and for grading. Even some of our servers run on open source," said Rahul De, Professor in Information and Communication at IIM-B (Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore), reports The Economic Times. IIM Bangalore stated that it is working to fulfill its ambitious project of becoming an online university, making every course available online by integrating proprietary software of SunGard and free and open source software (Foss) platforms, such as Linux and Moodle. "We will help IIM-B cut costs by 75 percent. Half our employees used to work in colleges and universities themselves, so we know the best practices," said SunGard Higher Education Chief Executive Ron M Lang. SunGard, a $5.6-billion education software and services provider, which started to implement unified digital solution (UDC) at IIM-B campus, has also planned to take the solution to other institutes, such as IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow and IIM Kozhikode. Also, IIM Ahmedabad (IIM-A) has created a blueprint to complete an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation integrating proprietary as well as open-source software at campuses, said Dean Prof. BH Jajoo. "We have roped in a few companies to do information technology (IT) implementation and in return, we will help them in their e-governance projects," he said. Similarly, IIM Calcutta is upgrading its ERP implementation through HCL and extending it beyond its flagship courses. IIM Lucknow is digitising its Learning Resource Centre, which has a stock of thousands of documents, using Greenstone Digital Library, an open source software. "We are trying to go paperless and improve student services," said Sanjay S Degloorkar, a library Faculty Member at IIM-L. India's education sector will step up its IT spend from an estimated $356 million in 2008 to $704 million in 2012, reflecting a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 19 percent during 2007-2012, according to Springboard Research. Several companies, such as SunGard, HCL, Oracle and SAP, are engaged in these cost-cutting exercises.