Navigating the Anthology Transition: What Institutions Should Do Now for SIS and CRM Stability as the Company Restructures
Anthology has filed for Chapter 11 and is refocusing on its Teaching & Learning portfolio (including Blackboard) while preparing to divest the SIS/ERP and CRM/Student Success lines. Ellucian has signed on as a stalking-horse bidder for the SIS/ERP business, while Encoura is the stalking-horse for CRM/Student Success—subject to court-supervised auctions.
What this means for Anthology SIS/CRM Institutions?
Blackboard will remain steady, most LMS connections are commoditized and prebuilt; the real operational risk is around new SIS and CRM implementations and enterprise-wide integrations—often 40+ downstream systems rely on them (identity, admissions, enrollments, programs, courses, grades, finance, advising, communications, data analytics). With ownership and go-to-market models in flux, institutions in active implementations, or in-post production — face delivery and roadmap uncertainty and timeline slippage. The next 3–6 months will be critical for continuity planning and prioritization. Anthology integrations must be implemented as a future-proof sustainable strategy, not a short-sighted, brittle, rip-and-replace project.
What SIS institutions should do this month
1) Work with an experienced integration partner
Institutions should engage an integration partner who understands higher education data models, multi-system dependencies, and ensures your integrations remain resilient and ready for what’s next.
With Lingk, institutions migrating to a new SIS can design, build and deploy integrations at accelerated timelines with AI agents. Lingk’s system integration practices provide deep experience across SIS SaaS providers, including: Anthology, Ellucian, Workday and now Salesforce as an SIS—helping institutions maintain continuity while preparing for future flexibility when migrating to a new cloud system.
2) Capture and document the current integrations, data flows, and ownership
Create a document of system & integration inventory for SIS/CRM: data flows, data owners, dependencies (identity, course data, gradeback, billing, DW loads), and SLAs. Tag each flow as mission-critical, important, or deferrable.
3) Lock down active or ongoing implementation and integration commitments
For projects mid-implementation or just past Go-Live, ask vendors to confirm resource commitments, support windows, and cutover dates in writing; require a named escalation path through the Chapter 11 period. (Anthology’s own update signals ongoing operations during the process; still, verify specifics for your contract.)
4) Design your transition plan
When transitioning to any new SIS, institutions must design how current and future systems will work side-by-side. Map how key data (identity, enrollment, grades) will sync between platforms and analytics tools, so student-facing operations stay seamless during migration. How the current SIS will sync with a future SIS/CRM and your warehouse/analytics while you phase features over.
5) Guard your identifiers & history
Define the golden identity model (person, account, program, course/section, term) and the history you’ll carry forward (enrollments, grades, communications). Decide now how you’ll handle deduplication, ID translation, and lineage so you don’t lose reporting continuity when platforms change.
6) Prioritize event-driven over batch (where possible)
Where APIs and webhooks exist, move critical flows (e.g., SIS → CRM identity/events, enrollment → learning tools, gradeback → SIS) to scheduled and event-driven patterns with retry and monitoring. That shift reduces cutover risk and makes vendor swaps less painful later.
7) Create a risk & validation matrix
For each priority flow, document failure modes (vendor delay, schema changes, throttling), roll-back steps, and post-cutover validation (record counts, balances, spot checks). Keep it to one page per flow to stay actionable.
How Lingk accelerates new SIS migrations
Lingk is an integration partner with extensive expertise in Student Information System integrations. Our team of service experts leverage our enterprise iPaaS, intelligent AI agents and pre-built system connectors to help institutions accelerate new system implementations and meet Go-Live deadlines.
Meet Lingk Symphony, our solution suite built for higher ed integrations:
Orchestra (Guided Digital Labor / AI agents)
Orchestra delivers integrations done-for-you through AI agents directed by Lingk’s human experts.Rhythm (iPaaS)
A modern, no-code/low-code API-first integration platform to keep data flowing across SIS/CRM, analytics, and learning tools.MetaScore (Metadata Management)
Get a clear view of your enterprise data landscape. Visualize data flows, track lineage, and monitor data quality checks across systems and schemas. Manage metadata, dictionaries, and catalogs under consistent governance to ensure trusted, high-quality data and a unified foundation for every integration.
Why CIOs are choosing Lingk for SIS implementations
Expert Done-for-You Services Combined with Integration Technology: Lingk offers an enterprise-grade iPaaS platform utilizing AI Agents guided by human experts to streamline the integration journey. Lingk offers integrations done-for-you so your team can focus on other critical areas for a successful system implementation.
Big Data Processing Engine: Lingk Rhythm is built on Apache Spark data processing engine for both big data pipelines and integrations—allowing thousands to millions of data rows to flow in seconds.
Metadata Management: IT leaders and data stewards get a clear view of their enterprise metadata, trusted data quality, and a unified foundation for every integration.
Lingk Approach: Getting Started
See our Pricing Calculator to build your Symphony
Start with the Platform
Choose your Lingk Integration Platform plan. We size it by your estimated data processing hours/year (how often integrations run per day and per week). The platform is the foundation for all Lingk solutions.Tell us your Target Objects (integration recipes)
Share how many integrations you want delivered. We price Digital Labor as a one-time, outcome-based fee per Integrated Target Object, with volume discounts at higher counts.(Optional) Add Data Management
If you want dictionaries, catalogs, lineage, and governance, add Data Management users. This add-on extends the Lingk Platform to enable powerful metadata management.Preview costs & ROI
Use the pricing calculator to model frequency (runs/day, days/week), number of Target Objects, and users. Get an instant estimate and download your ROI report.Kick off delivery
Lingk’s platform and services are designed to take on the entire integration lifecycle: Discovery → Design → Development → QA → UAT → Go-Live.
About Lingk
Lingk is a leader in data integration, providing an award-winning iPaaS, groundbreaking Integration Agents, and enterprise-level managed services to institutions and organizations. Lingk’s platform unifies data with dynamic pipelines and metadata management — empowering enterprises to achieve seamless data connectivity and unified analytics for transforming new system implementations, business process automation and AI initiatives.
