Platform to Offer Consistent Navigation and User Experience for Products from SunGard, Customers and Other Vendors

Dubai, UAE, April 6, 2010 - For students, faculty and staff, moving between various campus software applications can be difficult because of different user interfaces.  To help address this issue, SunGard Higher Education has designed Aurora, a new user-centric framework to make system navigation easier and more consistent.  Part of the Company's new Open Digital Campus strategy, Aurora will be applied to SunGard Higher Education products and will eventually be open for use by customers and other vendors to extend a familiar and intuitive look and feel throughout the entire digital campus. 

The ability to navigate the digital campus is growing in importance as more education interactions, from registration and administrative tasks to hybrid or full online learning, are done over the Internet, without physically stepping foot on campus.  Constituents judge their experience with an institution based on these digital interactions.  Consistent, effective navigation can help improve system usability and improve the overall user experience.

"One of our first Open Digital Campus development priorities was to create consistent navigation across our products, regardless of technology," said Darren Wesemann, chief product and technology officer for SunGard Higher Education.  "Aurora is already supporting the transformation of Banner Self-Service with persona-driven business processes built right into the user interface.  Moving forward, Aurora will help transform the look and feel of our product portfolio as we introduce new styles of interaction using Web 2.0 technologies.  Also important to note is that Aurora is delivered as an option, which allows customers to turn it on when they are ready to make the change."

Designed as a common framework, Aurora will be available to be adopted by institutions and other vendors to support solutions beyond SunGard Higher Education's and continue the same user experience across the entire digital campus.  Aurora is based on industry standards and open technologies and supports the rich user experience offered by Web 2.0 technologies.

Aurora is being rolled out in an evolutionary, phased approach that focuses on the most critical roles and practices first and does not require product re-implementations.  The first component in the Banner Self-Service user interface modernization, it is delivered as a light, modular and fast upgrade to Banner 8 rather than as a major release.  In this manner, new functionality can be delivered rapidly, for maximum impact and minimal risk.  

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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 435 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and IT services company.

Trademark Information:
SunGard, the SunGard logo, and Banner 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.

For more information contact:
Toju Ogbe
BPG PR for SunGard Higher Education
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Tel: +971 4 295 3456
Fax: +971 4 295 1027
Mob: +971 50 104 5113
Email: toju@batespangulf.com

© Press Release 2010