Real Cost of Ownership

Real Cost of Ownership

by John Rauchert -
Number of replies: 2

My Institution is currently looking into options for moving our LMS implementation forward. I have been tasked with developing a Competitive Analysis of Open Source Systems. One of the systems I am looking at is Moodle.

I am trying to get a sense of the Real Cost of Ownership of implementing and running a Moodle install from the point-of-view of an institution of similar size and userbase.

We are currently a WebCT 4.1 Campus Edition with a bi-directional integration with SCT Banner and Luminis, Oracle, MS Windows 2003 Server Shop (although we do have some experience with Linux on our backend infrastructure). In 2006/2007 we hosted 961 courses with 1729 sections serving a student user base of 17,602.

I am looking for information around the cost of (hardware, implementation, staffing, maintenance, training, and content migration).

Here are some of the questions we are looking at:

  1. Number of Student FTE (Full time equivalents) your institution has?
  2. What Database environment do you use for your implementation?
  3. Do you have a sense of the storage space you were using before you implemented Moodle?  If so did you notice a change in your storage requirements and what type/degree of change did you experience?
  4. When you implemented Moodle on campus did you purchase new server hardware or did you repurpose your existing hardware? What types of servers (specs/os) are you using?
  5. Do you have in house support?  If approximately how many support personnel do you have?
  6. If you are using an external support provider approximately how much does that cost your institution?
  7. What type of training costs did you experience when implementing Moodle?
  8. Approximately how many hours of training did you require?
  9. How reliable have you found moodle to be?  (i.e. how much unscheduled downtime do you experience?)
  10. How much scheduled Downtime do you require to maintain your systems operation?
  11. When moving from your previous systems to moodle how long did it take for your institution to complete this migration?


Is there an institution out there willing to share some of this type of information or can you point me to a contact or source of information that meets our criteria?

John F. Rauchert

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In reply to John Rauchert

Re: Real Cost of Ownership

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
> a sense of the Real Cost of Ownership of implementing and running a Moodle ...

Talking about "Real Cost" you know that some of those candidates you do not _own_ at all? ;-(

> In 2006/2007 we hosted 961 courses with 1729 sections serving a student user base of 17,602.

I terms of user base, your institution might not belong to the major league. It all depends on how intensive the use is.

> MS Windows 2003 Server Shop (although we do have some experience with Linux on our backend infrastructure) ...

Time to swap your ends smile With Linux you can get more out of your hardware with much less hassle. There is a whole forum dedicated to "Hardware and Performance" see for yourself: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=596

I don't have the overview to answer the catalog of other questions. That is a pretty comprehensive list which sound more like a feasibilty analysis. Did you try contacting people at moodle.com?
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In reply to John Rauchert

Re: Real Cost of Ownership

by Robert Brenstein -
Check out http://www.isu.edu/itrc/resources/LMS_Focus_Group_Report.pdf

As a ballpark figure, your local operating costs (hardware, implementation, staffing, maintenance, training) won't change much as compared to WebCT. You will still need a server and staff to run and support it. If you want to have a commercial support, it will also cost money. You save the licensing fees and gain flexibility and customization options.


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