Penn, Digium, Deal for Campus Unified Messaging Platform

The University of Pennsylvania agreed to the joint development of a campus-wide unified messaging system using Digium Inc.’s Asterisk, said to be the first open source telephony platform. The open platform affords Penn the ability to expand its messaging offerings while controlling rising infrastructure costs, according to Penn officials.

The university’s Information Systems and Computing (ISC) group developed a unified messaging component with enhanced services such as departmental voice systems, voice messaging, automatic call distribution, and operator services. The solution also pulls messages from e-mail and voicemail into a single data message store. By combining voicemail, e-mail, and fax mail into a central mailbox, users can send, retrieve, and manage all their messages using any communication device.

“Our traditional system created two copies of a message, making user management difficult. Users were reading messages in one place and having them appear unread in yet another,” said Dikran Kassabian, senior technology director for Penn’s ISC group. “The appeal of Asterisk was not only the fact that the university was able to download the software for free, but more importantly, the fact that the solution can be developed and customized in a way that is more convenient for our users.”

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Puerto Rico’s Polytechnic Picks Jenzabar Total Campus ERP

The Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico (PUPR) licensed Jenzabar’s CX ERP system, Internet Campus Solution (JICS), and Non-Traditional System (NTS), part of a larger project to re-engineer its processes following the expansion of the university to remote campuses in Miami and Orlando. School officials said that the Total Campus Management platform supports further growth and the expansion of online student services.

Jenzabar’s TCM solution fit with Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico’s decision to implement a single ERP instead of best-of-breed solutions for each department. PUPR said the firm’s commitment to the Hispanic market was another important factor in the decision, particularly the establishment of a local support center in Puerto Rico, which is one feature of its partnership with PUPR.

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