Submittal for the Larry L. Sautter Award
Project Title:
Kuali Ready – Academic Continuity Made Easy
Submitter(s):
William Allison
Director, Campus Technology Services
UC Berkeley
2195 Hearst Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94720
510-643-4845
wallison@berkeley.edu
Project Team:
Gianni Carlo Contardo, Project Manager & Lead
Tom Tsai, Technical Manager
Karin Bliman, Analyst
Kai Hsieh, Developer
Lito Tejada, Developer
Richard Katz, Developer
Eric Liao, Developer
Project Summary
Kuali Ready is a service that supports business continuity planning for higher education. It enables all
departments, regardless of size, to prepare for the resumption of critical functions as quickly as
realistically possible after any disruptive event. Using a web-based questionnaire, the user is led through
a structured interview process that provides the necessary guidance and information, to produce a
departmental continuity plan that includes a series of action items designed to make the department
more ready for a disruptive event. Moreover, the service is highly customizable for every participating
institution and can easily accommodate differences in organizational structure, terminology,
procedures, or policy. It was developed specifically for use in higher education, and is now available to
all colleges and universities. UC Berkeley has been instrumental in the development of the service.
During the past two years, we have provided functional expertise, project leadership, and technical
resources. This has been an extremely successful project on many levels.
Project Description
Although many universities have well developed Emergency Management programs that focus on life,
health, environmental, and property issues during a crisis, few institutions of higher education have
successfully implemented continuity of operations planning to ensure the continuance of the academic
mission. Private sector tools for business continuity planning are primarily designed to be used at the
top levels of the organization. They are best suited for use in environments where continuity planning is
centralized. None of them specifically address the requirements of university environments, where
many crucial operational decisions are made at the level of the individual department, instructor, or
principal investigator. Developing and delivering a sustainable service that supports business continuity
planning for higher education was the primary goal of the Project.
Key features and benefits of the Kuali Ready service:
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Widespread accessibility.
Well-designed and extremely easy-to-use.
Users do not have to be continuity planning experts; Kuali Ready can be used by personnel in
any department on campus.
No training is required. End users are provided with an intuitive interface and step-by-step
questionnaires that provide guidance.
Users can begin the continuity planning process within minutes of accessing the service.
Operational effectiveness and flexibility in any scenario.
A tried and true business continuity planning service. Since its release, over 75 universities have
adopted the Kuali Ready service for use within their environments. Currently, more than 3,400
departmental continuity plans have been produced using the tool.
Multiple hosting sites – UC Berkeley, San Diego Super Computing Center, University of Toronto,
& University of British Colombia.
Extremely affordable.
Scalable.
A guiding principle was to create a well-designed, extremely easy-to-use application that could be used
by personnel in any department on campus but also suited for use by multiple institutions of higher
education. Since we wanted participation from many different institutions and departments, any
barriers associated with utility and usability had to be significantly reduced. With Kuali Ready, users do
not have to be continuity planning experts, no technical expertise is necessary, no training is required,
and they are provided with an intuitive interface and step-by-step directions. Users can begin the
continuity planning process within minutes of accessing the service. Furthermore, the solution also
supports federated authentication, which enables each institution to use the service while maintaining
their enterprise user identities and passwords.
Kuali Ready is based on an application originally developed and launched in 2004 by the University of
California, Berkeley. Restarting Berkeley was our first generation continuity planning tool. This
application was rewritten, rebranded as UC Ready, and extended by UC Berkeley to the entire University
of California System in 2007. In response to expressions of interest by many other universities, the
Regents of the University of California shared the code with the Kuali Foundation. It was then offered as
a hosted subscription service via the Kuali Foundation to other colleges and universities. This working
relationship has been instrumental in satisfying a need in higher education, assuring the long-term
sustainability of this solution, and setting an example of a truly collaborative venture. UC Berkeley has
been and continues to be at the core of the development, maintenance, and evolution of the Kuali
Ready service.
Although there are some functional similarities, the feature and functionality set provided Kuali Ready is
far greater than previous tools developed at UC Berkeley. And it is delivered via a software-as-a-service
(SaaS) delivery mechanism. Subscribing and using the tool is not a major undertaking. Development,
testing, patches, upgrades, and management of the service are handled by the hosting institutions (e.g.
UC Berkeley). When compared to a local onsite installation, the total cost of ownership is significantly
less and the time to value is much faster.
Through the Kuali Foundation, interested institutions can select a software-as-a-service implementation.
Subscribers benefit from low barriers to entry, rapid deployment, affordability, reduction in total cost of
operation (TCO) since capital expenditures and operational expenditures are minimized, centralized
management, expert technical support, and becoming part of a community of interest.
There is tremendous interest in the service both nationally and internationally. Kuali Ready is used by
both the University of California (where it’s known as UC Ready) and the California State University
systems. Currently, there are approximately eighty (80) subscribing institutions in Australia, Canada,
and the United States using the hosted solution (SaaS). Moreover, we are planning to expand to Asia,
Europe, and add a hosting partner in Australia. A few months ago Gartner, Inc. contacted the Project’s
leadership and is interested in including Kuali Ready in their business continuity Magic Quadrant.
This project has succeeded because of well-defined objectives, a common vision, and an effective
governance model along with support, enthusiasm, and cooperative efforts on several different levels.
Development and distribution of the service is done via the Kuali Foundation, a growing community of
universities, colleges, businesses, and other organizations that have partnered to build and sustain
open-source software for higher education, by higher education. Project level planning, execution,
monitoring, and reporting functions are overseen by the Kuali Ready Project Manager. There are eight
universities (partners) that have invested funds and other resources to support the project. It is truly a
collaborative effort. Each partner institution appoints a representative to the Project Board and
Functional Council. Overall strategic guidance and executive sponsorship is provided by the Project
Board. Collecting, assessing, and prioritizing feature development is done by the Functional Council.
Kuali Ready is an example of a successful multi-institutional collaborative effort within the higher
education community.
Technology Utilized
Kuali Ready is a web-based application with the following characteristics:
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Platform: Java/J2EE
Framework/Tools: Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Apache Struts 2, Spring, Hibernate (Java)
Federated Identity & Access Management: Shibboleth
Delivery Model: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) & source code package available for onsite
installation
Kuali Ready provides institutions with a community-sourced, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for
business continuity planning. Each subscribing institution is provisioned with a customizable service
environment that includes a unique URL and white-branded instance. Using a Java/J2EE platform, Kuali
Ready combines various frameworks and technologies such as JasperReports, Java Persistence API with
Hibernate, Spring, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), and Apache Struts 2, to provide a scalable, extensible,
and rich Web 2.0 user experience.
UC Ready, (the predecessor to Kuali Ready), was built on ColdFusion, a proprietary platform with an
unclear future roadmap. In order to evolve UC Ready into a sustainable and scalable service for
worldwide deployment, a re-platforming effort was required to transform UC Ready into Kuali Ready.
Kuali Ready is built on J2EE, an industry wide de facto platform for enterprise software. It has a robust
architecture & platform which enables continuous improvement of the service, faster to market
deployment, and lower total cost of ownership in terms of on-going enhancements and maintenance. It
was intentionally designed and implemented to deliver high quality services including extensibility,
reusability, scalability, availability, security, and performance.
Timeframe of Implementation
April 2010
Beta version released to Early Adopters
December 2010
General Availability of SaaS Service
August 2011
Release of version 2.0
November 2011
Source code package available for download
June 2012 (estimated) Release of version 3.0
Customer Satisfaction Data
1. Widely used within the University of California system. Rebranded as UC Ready, the service is
used throughout the system by campuses and other affiliates.
2. A large and growing subscriber base. Kuali Ready is currently being used by approximately
eighty (80) subscribers in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Many are highly recognized
institutions of higher education. This has been achieved without actively marketing the
service.
3. Community Sourced. A community sourced model is used to evolve Kuali Ready.
Enhancements are driven by the functional needs of the Kuali Ready subscriber community and
each partner institution is directly represented by a subject matter expert on the Functional
Council.
4. Multiple investing institutions. At present, there are eight (8) partner institutions that
contribute financial, technical, and functional resources to the support, sustainability, and
evolvement of the project.
5. Strong alignment between the functional community and the Kuali Ready. As a team, we’ve
been successful in effectively using technology to achieve and support the goals and objectives
of the continuity planning community.
6. Interest from technology research & advisory firms. In recent months, we’ve been contacted
on multiple occasions by notable firms and media outlets. All of them indicated that they’ve
heard about Kuali Ready through satisfied customers; this includes Garntner, Inc.
7. 2012 Team Award - UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Outstanding Staff Award