Sun Microsystems Inc. :SUNW>, and Campus Pipeline Inc., a provider of Web-integration enterprise software for higher education today announced an alliance to rollout the Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) strategy in higher education. The two companies have aligned product development roadmaps and are developing technologies and applications to enable schools and universities to unite several technologies and deliver services on demand for their campuses.
In a bid to solve technology challenges in higher education using open standards, both Sun and Campus Pipeline plan to:
“Dedication to open standards has allowed our one-stop service vision to evolve into a no-stop, service-on-demand digital campus for Pepperdine constituents,” says John Lawson, chief information officer of Pepperdine University. He also expressed the importance of software companies’ recognition of the complex integration needs of higher education.
Sun ONE, which incorporates Sun’s software product portfolio, all based on open standards, is designed to maximize existing technology assets and eliminate the traditional practice of ‘ripping out and replacing’ existing environments, while Campus Pipeline’s integration technology extends the life and functionality of legacy systems on campus, connecting academics, administration, and community life into a central network of people, information, and services.
Kim Jones, vice president of Global Education and Research for Sun Microsystems, explains: “The roll out of Sun ONE in higher education supports our vision of providing a scalable and robust foundation for traditional software applications while laying the groundwork for future service methods such as Web services in education,” she says.
Jones adds that Campus Pipeline and Sun are already providing the benefits of open standards-based digital campuses to 100 institutions of higher education and says that over the next several years, Sun’s relationship with Campus Pipeline will continue as these benefits will be additionally brought to hundreds of schools.
“Campus Pipeline recognized early on that schools required open technologies that would assist them in harnessing the disparate systems and applications that reside on their campuses. Those technologies opened the door for this alliance with Sun and have propelled our development efforts,” says Tom Lewis, chairman and CEO, Campus Pipeline.
The iPlanet messaging, calendar, LDAP directory, and Web servers are currently available in the Campus Pipeline Web Platform 3.0.1. The recently announced Campus Pipeline Luminis product family incorporates the same servers, then extends the offering of iPlanet products by incorporating application and integration servers and unified user management applications into its technology base. The Luminis Integration Suite, a part of the Luminis family, provides a full-featured EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) server through the inclusion of the iPlanet Integration Server, EAI Edition 3.0.
Based on open standards, Campus Pipeline products integrate with a school’s choice of information systems and other applications including CARS, CMDS, Datatel, Jenzabar, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Poise, SCT, Blackboard, e-College, Prometheus, WebCT, and homegrown applications.
