She had taken all of the most challenging classes that our high school had to offer, then took college courses to fulfill the requirements for the lame required classes like economics, government, American history, etc. She graduated a year ahead of schedule, and was the only person in her class with a perfect 4.0 - including the college courses. The next highest GPA was a 3.97 held by a guy who had taken the some of the challenging classes, but had also taken lots of “easy A” elective classes. When my friend was announced as the valedictorian, his parents threatened to sue, and my friend was replaced.

Perhaps a better question is who is actually even managing SD now that Pat and almost all the exec team are gone. You can’t even blame Jack Blount any more. No one from corporate Huntsville is left, are they? Who? Who *are* the VPs of SirsiDynix today? Seems like Vista did a great job of gutting the executive team as well, not to mention 8.0

Great analysis of the situation! That should really have been a post.

After reading what you’ve said here, I do appreciate what you’re going through and I learned a little more of the back-story behind the move, which I’m glad of.

But you’ve got to admit that a fair amount of what you’re saying here is speculation into what SirsiDynix did or did not know and when. I also disagree with you that libraries are the only ones bearing the brunt of the risk. Even those that recently purchased server hardware and software. Those systems are not going to disappear overnight, they will continue to exist, and the company will eventually help them ease over to Rome (whenever that may materialize).

So you can’t say that those purchases were a waste because, you know as well as I, that hardware is mutable and can be re-tooled and reconfigured to accommodate new software and services.

Have you seen the movie The Prestige? it’s a 6 or 7 out of 10 in my book, but there is a scene where one magician talks about a trick “double”–a person who looks like the magician, but isn’t. He says, “be very careful giving someone that power over you”. He goes on, “When I incorporated this bloke into my act, he had complete power over me.”

Well, the same thing happened to libraries when we cast our lot in with ILS vendors. So you can’t let this sort of thing get you down and discourage you. It’s also why, Dave, that folks like you and I, (and Casey, and Ryan, and Art, and Ross, and Dave Walker, and so on) work furiously to build the features that we want.

So, I think you (and Andrew Pace) are correct in predicting that something like this will drive users toward open systems like Evergreen (and to a lesser extent, Koha). Perhaps SirsiDynix was aware of this possibility, perhaps not. But in the larger scheme of things, I still believe that their ’sooner rather than later’ approach to this move will benefit both them and their customers in the long run.

So the short-term is going to be very hard for you. Especially you, Dave. But you’re a resourceful guy with a solid head on your shoulders and you’ll be riffing on Rome (if and) when Huddersfield upgrades/migrates. So I feel for you because you’ve been cast into a period of limbo where you feel like if you develop for Horizon you’re wasting your time, but if you don’t develop at all, you’re losing a part of yourself.

So start developing platform-independent tools–a practice I’ve been starting to adopt myself. I’d be glad to join in with you on this. Don’t let it matter which system comes your way.

And whatever you do, Dave, don’t stop hacking.

3 years ago, Dynix (prior to the buyout by Sirsi) took a risk — rather than applying another layer to lipstick to the Horizon 7 branch, they would totally rewrite the ILS from the ground up.

The new ILS would use 21st century development techniques (modular code design, multi tier architecture, etc) to provide a 21st century ILS (database independence, full API set, web services, low footprint web based staff client, portal based OPAC, e-commerce, VIP, etc).

It really was a huge risk for Dynix but, apparently, one that made them attractive to the other vendors. After the buyout, Sirsi hired Gartner to give them a full evaluation of the work done on Horizon 8. As customers, we were told that Gartner not only gave the development work a “thumbs up”, but they positively gushed about the potential of the product and the methodology being used to create it. If it was a white elephant, why didn’t Gartner spot it?

Two years on from that and everything the company has said continued to be positive. Yes, it was delayed, but you’d be amazed if any software project of this size was on time. Heck, I’ve seen a senior Sirsi manager at a conference swear on his children’s lives that they (the company, not the children!) would continue to develop Horizon and Unicorn for the foreseeable future. If the reality was different, why continue with the deception?

The company message had been clear — both Dynix and Sirsi customers knew that the long term plan was to merge Horizon and Unicorn (Rome was being talked about in 2005), but we were all told that that would happen 5 to 10 years down the line.

And so we enter March 2007. Numerous libraries around the world are running the pre-release version of Horizon 8. Many more new customers have signed contracts based entirely on the strength of 8. Even more are well down the preparation path for moving to 8 this summer. Public libraries, many of which had to fight to get the funding, have spent tens of thousands of dollars getting the recommended hardware in place. The company has said that 8 is just a few weeks away from general release, with many of the modules now classified as bug free. Potential new customers are still being wooed with 8.

Are we to seriously believe that all of the above is allowed to continue at a time when (presumably) Sirsi have known for at least a year that the project is either failing or is going to fail? To announce to the world that 8 has become a white elephant would be a huge risk to the company and its credibility… but apparently that’s not a risk the company is willing to make. Has the company mismanaged the project so badly that it’s now beyond recovery? Is the company not prepared to risk further money to complete the project? I don’t know the answers to those questions because, as loyal customers, we’ve not been told and probably never will be told.

It would seem that the company (or perhaps specifically the new owners Vista, as their money had not been used to finance the develop) decided to “play it safe” and stop everything and everybody from going any further. Yes, that kind of decision takes a massive set of balls, but (presumably) they’ve done their calculations and can afford to lose X% of their customer base and Y% of their credibility in order to secure the required short term gain on their investment.

So, where does that leave us? Anyone already in the migration to 8 is up the creek. Anyone who’s already spent their hardware budget on new servers may well be up the creek. Anyone who has spent the last year preparing for a summer upgrade is up the creek. Anyone who was really looking forward to the new functionality (and needs it sooner rather than later) is probably up the creek. Anyone who has just signed a contract for 8, typically after going through a lengthy tender and evaluation process, is up the creek.

To my mind, it would seem the risk lies entirely with the libraries. We took a risk when we decided to continue with Horizon after a year long tender process …all the functionality that we wanted would be there in 8 …all the functionality I wanted was there! Heck John, we both know that all those cool new features we added to our respective catalogues were done in spite of our ILS rather than because of it! But, with 8, I could see a world of opportunity opening up for some really major and seriously “cool” new stuff (thanks to the APIs and web services).

But that was all soooo last week…

p.p.s. blyberg++

Somewhere along the line, the decision was made that 8.0 was either not sustainable or not in line with the company’s long-term vision of the product. The result was that a tough choice was presented and they took the more difficult path because it could potentially lead to a much better product.

Mary-Louise

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/

I agree that scrapping the Horizon 8 project may have been the correct decision. No matter how fancy a system looks, I don’t want it if it doesn’t work. However, I’m very skepticle that SirsiDynix can deliver a reasonable solution by the end of this year like they claim in the Rome press release. From what I’ve read, it looks like Rome will be based on existing Unicorn code with a little smattering of Horizon code thrown in. I’m afraid Rome will end up like another 7.4 debacle.

In the end, this announcement may be good as it’ll encourage us to look around and make sure there isn’t another ILS that meets our patrons’ needs better. If only I could find OPACs that don’t require extensive hacking to work the way I want . . .

And I think it’s far too premature to say that punting on 8.0 will not benefit libraries and their users. Perhaps in the short term, users will see and feel some groans of pressure and things move toward an equalized state.

My “tear it down and build it back up” doesn’t refer to a literal rebuild, but a reevaluation of their entire process, business model, and yes, software.

So, I can understand that Horizon users will be uncomfortable for awhile, but it’s the long run we need to look at. If we think in terms of news cycles, we’re really not doing ourselves any favors, we need to account for the next 15-20 years when we consider what our course of action is. That’s why I applaud and admire risky decisions with uncertain outcomes when, behind them, is a desire for fundamental change.

As far as I’m concerned, the punt certainly doesn’t benefit the libraries that use Dynix/Horizon nor the users of those libraries.

Change is good, but sudden upheaval is bad.

I’m guessing from your “tear it down and build it back up” comment you weren’t actually aware of what Horizon 8 was? We will certainly continue to see the commercial vendors tearing ‘em down, but I doubt now we will ever see one build it up again from scratch.

I too wish Sirsi the best of luck with Rome and I’ll eagerly wait to see what miracles they can perform with Unicorn and lipstick.