From the perspective of a software company, something like SIF adds needless additional costs. Want to plug into SIF? Get certified: http://www.sifinfo.org/us/sif-certification.asp. API docs? Support? Good luck finding that.
The reality is that most of the standards you're talking about are free money for high-priced consultants.
Many of the SIS providers have failed to make these solutions easy to implement and they've allowed these standards to become overly complex. I've kinda said that in each of my posts.
But that's besides the point. I'm not arguing that Clever and LearnSprout aren't adding some kind of value. Of course they are.
But they are merely letting schools trade out one piece of vendor lock-in for another. And as we see play out in this industry, over and over again, is that vendor-lockin comes back to bite everyone involved.
So, instead of changing the conversation, why not address my question: why not offer the specs for your API and data formats under a free and open copyright regime? Let the market decide what format is best and what providers are best, but let the data be free and open.
With that, you'd even be beating SIF at their own game.
You don't necessarily have to submit them to a standards body like ECMA or IMS. You can just publish them under an open license that is free to use by everyone involved.
You'd still be able to provide your service and charge for it accordingly.
Pearson already offers an open-standards based integration solutions. Yes, it's convoluted and difficult to implement. But it's out there and it's used by almost all of the real SIS providers. The idea that FTP and CSV are the only options available to schools is false. See http://sifinfo.org for an example.
All you are doing is changing which fox is in the hen house. It's a good game, business-wise, but is it really the right move for the K-12 providers and their customers?