In this episode of the Moving Forward podcast, Ande Smith, President of Deer Brook Consulting, breaks down three key takeaways from Ellucian Live 2026 and what they mean for higher education leaders today.
Full Transcript
Ande Smith: Hi, welcome to the Moving Forward podcast with Deer Brook. I’m Ande Smith, president of Deer Brook.
Ande Smith: And in today’s session, I wanted to spend just a few minutes to recap some of the learnings for our Anthology customers, who are now part of the Ellucian family, from Ellucian Live 2026. If you are unaware, that’s the signature Ellucian event for its customers and partners, held in Denver this year, last week, the 19th to the 22nd of April. What a great show. Ellucian did put on a very nice show for folks. And, for the Ellucian family, it was perhaps similar to what they’ve seen in the past, but with the new cast of Anthology customers, or former Anthology customers, there was some really important takeaways. In other podcasts and webcasts, we’ll talk about more detail around what we’ve seen and what we heard and what I think you can expect.
Ande Smith: But today, I want to just cover some of the high points for those who may not have been there and give a little bit of perspective, as we work with a number of Anthology customers, and what we think it means for them. The first of all of those that I think, and probably the most important of the takeaways, is that the Anthology Student and Anthology Finance platforms are not deadheaded. That is, they’re not dead platforms that are going to be discontinued and that somehow, even though Ellucian will support them, there’ll be a hard push to move Anthology customers, or former Anthology customers, off those platforms.
Ande Smith: If you’re unfamiliar, you haven’t read or you haven’t heard or you didn’t attend to know what their strategy is, it is really in and around a product called Ellucian Student. And Ellucian Student is an interesting attempt, I would say, or an interesting strategy for them to build a series of capabilities that people can migrate to, customers can migrate to for the student information system and other capabilities, but without having to do the big data migration to a brand new platform. So in that respect, Ellucian Student is a series of capabilities, think simply registration or financial aid, where a college can get the benefits of a different graphical interface. I may use the term GUI in this podcast, but a different screen with different capabilities. But those capabilities are fueled or powered by reaching back into Colleague in the cloud, or Banner in the cloud, and what we learned now: or Anthology Student in the cloud. So those capabilities are its future without necessarily needing, in the near term, to re-engineer all their products. And for those customers, Colleague or Banner or Anthology Student who are in the cloud already (which most Anthology customers are), you’re able to continue on the platforms that you’re already using and now get the benefits of a different development path that’s common across all those platforms. That’s different than our worst fears, or worst fears for Anthology customers, is that Anthology Student particularly would be kind of a castoff and left alone.
Ande Smith: Ellucian’s strategy is to now do a couple of things with Ellucian Student. So first, they do want to bring some of the unique capabilities that are in Anthology Student that are unique, or certainly specialized, or more oriented towards trade, training colleges or to technical colleges, or systems where there’s a focus on seat hours and not credit hours. So that opportunity, they’re gonna bring capabilities like that, and a handful of others where Anthology Student was perhaps ahead of Ellucian’s products, gonna bring those up and make them a part of Ellucian Student. And then as I said, the second part is the continued ability to live in that Anthology platform and work in it. And when you’re ready to be able to move up to Ellucian Student and get the advantage of what it is.
Ande Smith: I think that is really, if you were to think about it in the way I conceive of that, is that, rather than Anthology independently developing Anthology Student, you’re now beholden or gathering the benefit, depending on how you view it, of what Ellucian’s investment is on its Ellucian student. But to be clear, that’s a different path, not the same path, but it’s not one that’s any worse than if you were on Banner or Colleague in the cloud. You’re going to see a different development path now as they bring those products together with the enhancement of what was in Anthology Student, where it was different or better. And that’s great news if you were an Anthology customer.
Ande Smith: I will say for those Anthology customers who were still in the older on-prem versions, you’re in the same boat as now 80%, apparently, round number, of Ellucian customers who are on-prem with Colleague or on-prem with Banner. To take advantage of Ellucian Student, you’re gonna need to migrate up into a cloud platform. In side conversations, people acknowledged it’s entirely possible that if you were on Colleague on-prem, you could migrate to Colleague in the cloud, you could migrate to Banner in the cloud, you could migrate to Anthology Student in the cloud in theory; wherever it made the most sense for your organization. But to get the benefits of the Ellucian Student platform and their future investments for development, that’s all heading to Ellucian Student, which means you have to participate in a cloud platform. That’s a big lift, and places a lot of pressure on existing Colleague and Banner customers of Ellucian who are on-prem. But as we said, about of the 250 plus or minus customers of Anthology, about 50 were still on-prem. So for those in many ways, Anthology customers are better positioned for this future and can take advantage of some of the feature sets.
Ande Smith: As I mentioned, we’ll talk in later sessions about what some of those feature sets are. Some of them are very exciting. Some of them solve long held concerns of Anthology customers. The student portal, the faculty portal, as examples of things that weren’t quite the greatest and that many people wanted to see improvements on. Those improvements exist in Ellucian Student. So, that will be a way to continue to leverage your investment in Anthology. So, it’s very exciting that the product is not at its end of its road any more than Banner or Colleague or at the end of the road. It’s co-equal in many respects. I think the second big takeaway for folks to consider coming out of that is the continuation of development of Anthology Student independently of Ellucian student. There are a number of items that were covered by the developers, who you may know from their time at Anthology who are now part of the Ellucian team, where they articulated for those core products, Anthology Student and Anthology Finance, roadmaps that stretch out into the 12 month time frame. A number of the improvements and enhancements that were showcased or alluded to in the timelines were appropriately caveated. Those improvements, many of them were underway at the time of the bankruptcy and then through even last summer’s Anthology conference in Las Vegas where they highlighted their intention to develop in certain ways. Those things often are playing through, but there were a number of other enhancements that I think will be important to you.
Ande Smith: We’ll cover those in other podcasts or webinars, but I believe it’s super important as a takeaway, that they are still putting time and energy into the product and fulfilling promises that they had. Ellucian could have turned their back, in theory, on those commitments they had made, the innovations that were underway, and not continued to spend time and energy on that. But they’re not. And I think that’s also helpful in understanding a future with Ellucian Student overlaying on top of Anthology Student, is that they’re going to make that product better to integrate with Ellucian Student, and better for functionality for people who need it by finishing some of those items that were known to help keep Anthology Student particularly, but also Finance customers, happy and content that they made good investments and to be able to realize those investments.
Ande Smith: So again, for Anthology customers, that’s great news. Will those investments continue at the same pace as we stretch out past the 12-month timeframe? I think those will become, and this is an opinion, not a fact that I’ve known or been told, but I think it makes sense to expect that the investments will need to be more and more aligned to the Ellucian Student vision in the same way that there won’t be dedicated long, long-term Banner or Colleague enhancements. The future for Ellucian is its Ellucian Student platform and the capabilities that are presented by it to a user. But there are some pieces of work that seem to be beyond just bug fix, beyond just regulatory updates that at least for the next year and probably beyond, you’re going to continue to see improvements in the platform that is Anthology Student and Anthology Finance. So again, great news for those who are worried about capitalizing and getting the return on their investments for those platforms.
Ande Smith: The third item that I was going to bring up that I think is an important timeline, or important fact, is the timeline to going to Ellucian student. For some customers, and we’ve talked about in other podcasts and webinars, maybe you’ve almost gone live or maybe you’re just gone live and are continuing to stabilize. Maybe you’ve been up on the platform for a while and feel like it’s pretty stable. The Anthology acquisition by Ellucian is now four months old, give or take, those familiar with some of the points we covered in the road to that acquisition, the technological background was not well known to Ellucian, wasn’t supposed to be known at all really coming into the merger. So, the decision they’ve made to preserve Anthology Student and treat it in ways similar to Colleague and Banner as part of the Ellucian Student platform, those are relatively new. And that’s why this conference was so exciting to provide that clarity on the way forward. But the understanding of the how to make that happen is not well known.
Ande Smith: One of the things that I believe under the hood will be very helpful, and we talked about this with Greg Theisen in our other webinars and in other podcasts: Anthology was in some respects ahead of Ellucian in building API driven connectors to its platforms. And, you know, not to be too geeked out about that, but those are, can think of them as sort of plug-and-play opportunities to move data in and out of the system for all intents and purposes. So in that sense, the path is relatively quick to be able to move data and move capabilities up from Anthology Student into the Ellucian Student platform. Because as I described it, it’s a series of capabilities. Think, registering a student. You do that in the Ellucian Student interface. Getting that information and connecting it to the registration processes in Anthology Student is in some cases more straightforward. But it still has to be built. These are not automagically done. They have to be done right to give the right experience to students, to faculty, to staff, to make this all go.
Ande Smith: So the timeline, given that now Ellucian has been working on Ellucian Student for at least a year and a half, probably longer developing it, getting it ready so that they could launch and formally showcase it just last week, gonna take a while before we get it and see and have comfort in getting customers into the Ellucian Student interface powered by your legacy Anthology Student SaaS platform. So, the timing of that will be uncertain. It’s probably going to be into next year. The development team, it was clear that that’s a priority for Ellucian is to make that platform available for Anthology customers, former Anthology customers. But the timeline’s a little uncertain. There’s a lot of work to do. And as I mentioned, they’ve only really had four months to be thinking about it, and even to begin doing that work to make it available. But it’s not quite ready yet.
Ande Smith: So, one of the big takeaways is not that folks want to thrive in a world of continued uncertainty, but there will be some uncertainty for a period of time. It’s going to take a while to see how those capabilities and how they allow Anthology customers, former Anthology Student customers to interact with them. Gonna be a while before we see it. And I think the reality, though it was not emphasized highly at Ellucian Student is the capabilities that they present and the connections that they will make down to the Anthology products so that you don’t have to operate in Anthology to do certain things again, think, register a student. Some of those will come up quickly and easily, but others won’t. So they’ll likely, I would expect, and we didn’t see any particular demos of it with Anthology, for a considerable period of time, there’ll be things that you can do in Ellucian Student, you will want to do, you’re gonna be paying for it, it’s not a free uplift. There’ll be things in Ellucian Student you’ll be able to do and you’ll be happy to, but there’ll be other activities for some period of time where you’re gonna come back into the old Anthology familiar interface to do certain things.
Ande Smith: So where is that line? When does that transition happen where the user experience by users, whether you think about it through the lens of students or faculty or staff, when is it that you do the preponderance of your work in one and not the other? That I do not think is known. We’re going to need to see it. There going to be certainly, and I talked to some colleges there that are eager to consider being pioneers of that and help explore and with it, help shape, but that takes a certain sensibility and appetite to engage in that work. But I believe that we’ll see over the coming year, more and more clarity. But today, while I’m sure Ellucian would sign you up if an Anthology customer wanted to commit to a transition, it seems premature for most colleges and instances because we just don’t know what those pieces and parts will look like, what the look and feel will be, and frankly, what the value proposition is to each of you. But those are the three big high points that we see right now, or as takeaways coming out of that conference.
Ande Smith: The last point I’d like to make about it is that, inconsistently with where Ellucian is moving, what that really means is that there are changes in the professional services staff going on at Anthology, or of the former Anthology team. There have been a number of departures. A number of those familiar faces have found their way to Deer Brook and our partner, HigherEdBPO. As colleges think about that last point of when, and whether, they would want to consider movement to Ellucian Student or when and whether they’re going to get support to stabilize their implementation and continue to get value from it, reap the hard-won gains of getting through an implementation, or even to make sure that they have the right folks to advise them during an implementation. I think for those folks, irrespective of where you’re at in your journey with Anthology, now’s the time to start looking hard for partners. There are a number of partners in the market. We believe we’re a great one with our team, with HigherEdBPO, based upon the knowledge and skill we have implementing these systems, and sustaining them, and optimizing them. So now is the time to start thinking about that to make sure that to the extent that resources begin to be consumed in the partners and that you can get what you need to finish where you’re at in your journey, and get the value for your investments. That is something also to consider as part of the timing of a whether, and when, Ellucian Student will be the right pick for you is to make sure you get the value today and the support you need.
Ande Smith: That’s what we had for this short outtake. Look forward to speaking more with you and with some other folks to get broader perspectives on some of the details of it. I’m Ande Smith, this is the Moving Forward podcast with Deer Brook, and I hope you have a great day and look forward to talking with you later.
About Moving Forward
The Moving Forward Podcast tackles the questions higher ed leaders have about the recent acquisition of Anthology Student SIS/ERP solutions by Ellucian.
Join us as we talk to Anthology experts that have been on the inside and share our expertise both from a technical and a managed services perspective on what the future holds for your institution running Anthology Student.
Deer Brook Consulting and HigherEdBPO have partnered to serve institutions navigating Anthology Student’s purchase by Ellucian, bringing former Anthology development experience, higher education operational expertise, and technical managed services capabilities that you can’t find under one roof. Learn more here.
