SunGard Higher Education Outlines a Vision for the Open Digital Campus

New Vision and Technology Strategy Gives Institutions More Flexibility to Address the Evolving Needs of Higher Education

MALVERN, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SunGard Higher Education today announced the Open Digital Campus, a new vision and technology strategy which aims to give colleges, universities and foundations more flexibility to shape how technology meets their evolving needs.

“’Open’ refers to expanding the digital campus to include the use of modern technologies and alternative delivery methods, and also simplifying the interfaces with various systems through the use of industry standards. It is a technology evolution and the realization of the future of computing.”

“The Open Digital Campus gives higher education leaders more freedom to address today’s rapidly changing needs and readies them to address the demands of tomorrow’s higher education constituents,” said Darren Wesemann, chief product and technology officer, SunGard Higher Education. “’Open’ refers to expanding the digital campus to include the use of modern technologies and alternative delivery methods, and also simplifying the interfaces with various systems through the use of industry standards. It is a technology evolution and the realization of the future of computing.”

The Open Digital Campus strategy will help higher education institutions deliver technology solutions faster with flexible, extensible and modular components. In addition to traditional on-premise implementations, alternative delivery models, such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and hosting, composite applications and on-demand services, will provide more flexible options to suit an institution’s unique needs and preferences.

The Open Digital Campus strategy helps enable collaboration among customers, open source groups, standards bodies, members of the SunGard Higher Education Collaborative, and other organizations.

Mark Milliron, PhD, president and chief executive officer Catalyze Learning International, said “SunGard’s vision of the Open Digital Campus will help higher education institutions transform to more modular, open, collaborative and customized curricula, software and services. SunGard’s timing on this could not be better and positions them as a truly strategic partner for higher education institutions.”

Doug Fox, chairman of the Texas Connection Executive Board, said, “SunGard’s Open Digital Campus strategy opens a door to new possibilities and we are already stepping in. We are excited to demonstrate at EDUCAUSE a new capability on which we collaborated with SunGard Higher Education. This is a tangible example of how SunGard is already leveraging principles of open architecture to develop solutions to serve higher education.”

SunGard Higher Education customers using the Banner Unified Digital Campus or the PowerCAMPUS Unified Digital Campus administrative systems will be among the first to benefit from the new strategy and offerings helping enrich their existing environments. The new approach to digital campus flexibility, modularity and extensibility will give customers more room to grow and evolve their vision of a digital campus, regardless of the administrative solution they use.

SunGard Higher Education’s considerable company resources, deep knowledge of higher education, expertise helping hundreds of customers build and unify their digital campuses, and history of supporting open source and industry standards uniquely positions it to deliver on this strategy.

“The Open Digital Campus is as much an attitude and mindset as it is a technology strategy,” said Ron Lang, chief executive officer, SunGard Higher Education. “We are shortening the distance between ourselves and our customers – understanding what they need and then moving quickly to deliver. We are opening up our product strategy to help institutional leaders overcome challenges and prepare a path that shapes how technology will help them achieve their institutional missions.”

SunGard Higher Education will share more about the Open Digital Campus vision and strategy at the EDUCAUSE conference in Denver. Darren Wesemann and Doug Fox will present from 10:30 – 11:20 a.m. on Wednesday, November 4 at the Denver Convention Center, Korbel Ballroom 3B.

About SunGard Higher Education

SunGard Higher Education serves colleges, universities and foundations in 40 countries worldwide. Through its Open Digital Campus strategy, SunGard collaborates with the higher education community and provides software and services to help institutions find better ways to teach, learn, manage and connect. To learn more, please visit www.sungardhe.com.

About SunGard

SunGard is one of the world’s leading software and IT services companies. SunGard serves more than 25,000 customers in more than 70 countries.

SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software.

With annual revenue exceeding $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 435 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and services company on the Forbes list of private businesses. Based on information compiled by Datamonitor*, SunGard is the third largest provider of business applications software after Oracle and SAP. Continuity, Insurance & Risk has recognized SunGard as service provider of the year an unprecedented six times. For more information, please visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.

*January 2009 Technology Vendors Financial Database Tracker http://www.datamonitor.com

Trademark information: SunGard, the SunGard logo, Open Digital Campus, Banner and PowerCAMPUS are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.