During the meeting of the IGeLU Steering Committee with Ex Libris management in Budapest in March, 2015, one of the topics was the new Primo policy of Ex Libris with its strong emphasis on the SaaS environment and issues connected to the new policy from the point of view of the user community.
As a result of the discussions it became clear that there are various areas that needed urgently to be addressed;
- Communication issues about customers feeling forced to move to SaaS
- The relationship of the various Primo environments (local, dedicated and multi-tenant) and their further development options and limitation
- The consequences of moving to SaaS for customers with large local developments.
It was agreed that these questions should be discussed in a face to face meeting between members of IGeLU and ELUNA Primo PWGs and Ex Libris development on one hand and the Steering committees and Primo management on the other. IGeLU informed the ELUNA colleagues and they picked up the discussion with Ex Libris senior management at their annual meeting in Minneapolis, in May 2015. At ELUNA conference, Ex Libris agreed to face to face meetings in the summer of 2015.
Preparation
Subsequently we agreed that the Primo PWGs will prepare the base documentation for the face to face meetings with focus on necessary developments in the Primo SaaS environment in order to allow and create adequate space for local customization and users’ developments within the application framework. The document – 10 pages with 4 Appendices – was submitted to Ex Libris before the meeting and it was a great work done by the PWGs that very well documented the current situation and open issues and served perfectly as a base for the upcoming discussions.
Meeting in Jerusalem
The meeting took place at the headquarters of Ex Libris in Jerusalem from July 20th through July 23rd, 2015 The meeting was attended by representatives of Steering Committees and the Primo PWGs of IGeLU and ELUNA, including developers, and the Ex Libris VP for Discovery and Delivery Solutions and the heads of Primo product management and Primo development.
The 4 days discussions were very fruitful and touched all aspects of the new Ex Libris strategy. Ex Libris was very sensitive to the needs of the user community articulated in the document prepared by the PWGs and during the meetings and was very open for a close cooperation to solve the open issues.
Result
The first result of the meeting is a “Memorandum of Understanding” of the user groups and Ex Libris about the principles of the collaboration and the future development of the Primo SaaS environment. Development work on identified areas will start right after IGeLU conference in September 2015. You can read the “Memorandum of Understanding” on the ELUNA and IGeLU web sites. (Members only!)
Respectfully,
Habib Tabatabai, ELUNA Chair