Open Source | News

Rapid Start Kit To Help Higher Ed Institutions Implement Mobile Environments

• By Leila Meyer
• 03/13/12

Unicon, an open source service provider for education, is launching Rapid Start uMobile, a package of services designed to help educational institutions implement a uMobile environment to provide students, faculty, and staff with mobile access to applications, resources, and other data.

uMobile is open source software supported by the Jasig community and designed for higher education institutions. It enables institutions to provide secure access to campus materials on mobile devices such as iPhones and Android devices. uMobile provides authentication, groups and permissions, layout management, and preferences out of the box. It also offers a variety of modules, such as calendar feeds, RSS news feeds, campus maps, laundry and computer lab alerts, and dining hall menus.

Rapid Start uMobile is geared toward institutions without a mobile environment that need assistance setting one up. Unicon can set up uMobile as either an on-premise or hosted solution. Unicon assesses the institution's needs, installs and configures the uMobile Server, sets up authentication services for security and other services as needed, and submits the app to the Apple Store and Android Marketplace, where students, faculty, and staff can download it to their iPhone or Android device. Unicon can also customize the institution's mobile environment to offer any other uMobile modules.

Key features of Unicon's Rapid Start uMobile package include:

• Institutional environment assessment;
• uMobile Server installation and configuration;
• Authentication from a CAS server to a campus LDAP or Active Directory server;
• Server configuration to consume directory attributes from a single LDAP or Active Directory source;
• Branding and user experience;
• Resource configuration, such as announcements, calendars, and maps, as well as the institutions' existing mobile elements;
• App submission to the Apple Store and Android Marketplace; and
• Training.

Institutions can deploy the Rapid Start uMobile package for $20,000. Unicon also offers hosting services for the package at an additional cost. Further information is available on the Unicon site.