Press Releases
SunGard Higher Education Extends and Improves The Commons Online Community
November 14, 2011 — Malvern, PA
SunGard Higher Education’s virtual customer community, The Commons, has unveiled a new look and navigation that helps improve the user experience and makes it more interactive. The cleaner, more modern design, developed with feedback and suggestions from the Customer Advisory Board and overall customer community, makes it simpler for members to join discussions, find information, and collaborate with the community.
“Collaboration is a critical element of our Open Digital Campus vision,” said Michelle Reed, senior vice president, product management and marketing, SunGard Higher Education. “The Commons has become a powerful and valuable means to bring people together and help further their success. Relationships mean everything in education. Our customers find security and confidence in peer networks where experience and advice is shared based on common interests, products, challenges, geography, etc. Being a member of this community is an important benefit of being a SunGard Higher Education customer.”
More than 20,000 users worldwide have connected via The Commons since it was launched 18 months ago. The value grows as new members join and share their experiences, successes, best practices, reference materials, and lessons learned through articles, blogs, document libraries, wikis, and discussion threads, With the new look, RSS feeds and digest notifications, the community has an easier way to stay connected and informed.
The Commons runs on Enterprise Hive’s HiveSocial platform as a community of edu1world.com, a network designed exclusively for higher education. Members can benefit from the extended education and edu1world community.
“Our commitment to developing and supporting customers in higher education is what separates Enterprise Hive from other business social software providers,” said Vicki Tambellini, President of Enterprise Hive. “We are pleased that SunGard Higher Education has renewed their commitment to the HiveSocial platform to help deliver superior customer service.”
The Commons also houses SunGard Higher Education’s Community Source initiative. The Community Source initiative brings together the community’s insights and development experience, helping benefit all customers, makes functionality available faster, and helps ensure product quality through functional and technical reviews. To date, 56 institutions have made submissions and 16 customer-developed enhancements have been incorporated into Banner baseline. In addition, more than 60 other enhancements are in the pipeline.
To access the SunGard Higher Education Commons, visit commons.sungardhe.com. SunGard Higher Education customers must register and request access to restricted areas. A short video overview of the new look is available at commons.sungardhe.com/CommonsSunGardHE/50292.
About Enterprise Hive, LLC
Enterprise Hive provides social knowledge solutions to meet the needs of education and not-for-profit organizations that serve them. HiveSocial is a SaaS (cloud service) collaboration software solution that offers a social knowledge network that is affordable and easy to launch and maintain. Providing collaboration tolls and leading-edge technology, HiveSocial connects and supports collaboration and knowledge sharing across departments, divisions, or the global campus. HiveSocial delivers complete flexibility for user configuration that meets the requirements of higher education institutions and associations, technology vendors and vendor suppliers to higher education.
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 technology services companies. SunGard has more than 20,000 employees and serves over 25,000 customers in more than 70 countries. SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, 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 of about $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 434 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and IT services company. Look for us wherever the mission is critical. For more information, visit www.sungard.com.
Trademark information: SunGard, the SunGard logo, Banner and Open Digital Campus 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.