Press Releases
SunGard Higher Education Previews Extensible Mobile Framework
November 17, 2010 — Malvern, PA
SunGard Higher Education has released a preview of its new solution for helping institutions extend their digital campus experience to mobile devices. The SunGard Higher Education Mobile Connection, a framework and set of starter application components (m-Apps) scheduled to be available in November, will help institutions deploy and manage mobile strategies quickly, cost-effectively and more consistently.
Wake Forest University, a pioneer in providing mobile services in education, is one of 24 institutions involved with the development of SunGard Higher Education’s Mobile Connection. Anne Bishop, director, Application Development, Information Systems at Wake Forest, presented at the recent EDUCAUSE 2010 conference about her experience with mobile technology evolution. “The mobile device is becoming today’s students’ primary link to the digital world,” said Ms. Bishop. “The university must be part of this world in order to meet their expectations.” She shared how the demands of operating system upgrades, new devices, new capabilities and new applications made it increasingly difficult for the University to manage disparate applications.
The highly configurable and extensible framework is designed to support myriad applications and deliver them to a variety of mobile devices, including Apple iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices, Google Android-enabled smartphones, and RIM Blackberry devices.
The initial release of Mobile Connection authenticates and accesses data from SunGard Higher Education's Banner Digital Campus administrative system. Mobile Connection comes with an initial set of configurable starter application components (m-Apps), some of which utilize this integration, such as course schedules, and viewing grades.
“We are very excited about SunGard’s cross-platform framework and starter m-Apps,” said Ms. Bishop. “The collaborative community involvement will also help improve the variety and quality of mobile features that can be shared and managed within a university's mobile application offering.”
The number of applications is expected to grow quickly through community source development and the establishment of a new Mobile Connection code repository. The community, which can include institutions, vendors, and education associations, can develop and contribute other applications to the Mobile Connection code repository. Those apps can make use of the SunGard system integration or can integrate with other administrative systems, learning management systems and data sources. For example, an institution or 3rd party vendor could create an application to work with a specific parking system solution and then choose to share it with others via the code repository. SunGard Higher Education will consider incorporating outstanding applications into the standard framework.
“This is another strong example of the flexible and collaborative power of our Open Digital Campus strategy — how opening more technology options benefits our customers, partners and the higher education community,” said Darren Wesemann, chief technology and product officer, SunGard Higher Education. “The combination of SunGard leadership, an adaptable and extensible mobile framework, m-Apps, and the innovation and knowledge of the higher education community places significant new capabilities into the hands of individual institutions. This mobile ecosystem will grow stronger with each institution and application extension that is created.”
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. www.sungardhe.com
About SunGard
SunGard is one of the world’s leading software and technology services companies. SunGard has more than 20,000 employees and serves 25,000 customers in 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 380 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and IT services company. For more information, visit www.sungard.com.
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