I actually agree with all of that (also US K12). That's why I think you're better off with something you can sever ties with when it falls behind on #2 and use

I actually agree with all of that (also US K12). That's why I think you're better off with something you can sever ties with when it falls behind on #2 and use clear RFP and contract requirements + in-house dev talent to drive #3. The hardest to deal with is always going to be #3 because everyone always is trying to get you to use their whole architecture, even thought most of the time they suck at some or all of what they sell. I think that #3 will also get a lot better with commercial software. The reality is that most of these guys have spent the last 5-10 years buying up competitors who built other systems their customers were interested in as an attempt to get all that business under one contract. Their efforts integrating software from acquisitions has been pathetic, at least in part because they haven't had a services-oriented architecture even though that's what really is called for. So I think this is a major area where we'll see changes in the next 5-10 years. That being said, I think pretty much all off-the-shelf systems suck, but you're better off being able to hold someone else responsible for dev and sustainably meeting requirements and use in-house talent to hack around and problem solve so that users end up getting what they need fast. You also want to chuck systems every few years and get something a lot better without having to pay the upfront costs of a rewrite like you would with a BYO-SIS. And while I think this goes without saying, though these days I've seen districts screw this up, no matter how hosting is taken care of you need to own that data. You need nightly backups on servers you control and full access to your own information.