eScholar Data Definitions - Embrace and Extend?

K-12 data warehouse vendor eScholar provided data definitions for 750 elements to the pK-12 Data Model initiative sponsored by the U.S. department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics and mapped to both the SIF and NCES data standards.

This is a bold move for eScholar, but might provide additional leverage to market to states and districts, since they could guarantee data element alignment out of the box. Microsoft has a followed the embrace and extend model several times. This happens when an influential firm adopts an open standard and then adds substantial features to that standard that can, however, only be used by folks using the "extender's" systems.

This will be an interesting development to follow.

Chris