Wow. Schools pay load-based licensing costs for registration systems? There's a niche just waiting to be demolished by some startup... I think you have a use

Wow. Schools pay load-based licensing costs for registration systems? There's a niche just waiting to be demolished by some startup... I think you have a useful idea here, and you should try to find a way to make it work. It sounds like your university's IT department thinks so too, but they have real limitations and good reason to ask you to cease operation because, unlike your service, theirs is required to be available. It sounds like without the cooperation of that IT department, your app (at least at UNC) is going to be a big nothingburger. Do whatever you can to make them your partners in implementing this service rather than your adversaries. This could mean collecting data that explains how your service improves their service; helping them measure and upgrade their current system so the load is a non issue; integrating your code at a lower level (direct to DB); beta testing a parallel registration system that will eventually save them lots of money on licensing. You have a difficult task with any solution. University policy may prohibit certain things, such as allowing a student or a student's software to directly access the real course registration data; or the timeline to have your app approved to run inside the security perimeter may be too long for you to bother trying. You may also want to check your school's invention rights policy before pursuing any tighter integration with their systems. If this hiccup is not a showstopper for you, just keep building your product. You can work on displacing whatever is causing the problems at this IT department, but if that is too far afield from your core (proposed) business, maybe just move on and try deploying the app against other universities' registration systems.