West Texas A&M Selects Unicon for Open Source Portal Upgrade and Mobile Solution

SOURCE:  Unicon

Gilbert, AZ – May 2, 2012— Unicon, Inc., a leading IT consulting services provider specializing in open source for the education market, announced today that it has been selected by West Texas A&M University to perform a portal upgrade and to deliver a mobile framework. The university will be upgrading to uPortal 4.0, the latest version of the only open source enterprise portal framework built by and for the higher education community. With uPortal, the university will present customized content, such as announcements and calendars, to its approximately 8,000 students.

In addition, the university will implement uMobile, a next-generation mobile framework designed to deliver personalized, role-based content via browser-based and native applications. uMobile will allow students to stay connected to important campus information when they are mobile, such as courses and emergency notifications.

“One of the most innovative and creative solutions provided to the students of West Texas A&M University has been the uPortal framework. uPortal has created an online student success center for our campus, which is one of our strategic initiatives to improve the overall persistence rates of our students,” said James Webb, CIO at West Texas A&M University. “The updated platform will provide a highly anticipated mobile application framework that will allow us to keep pace with today’s generation of students and increase their overall chances of success.”

Established in 1910, the university offers areas of study including agriculture, business, education, the fine arts, nursing, political science, the natural sciences, and more. West Texas A&M University offers 61 undergraduate programs, 45 masters’ degree programs, and one doctoral program.

“West Texas A&M University has utilized the flexible, powerful core framework of uPortal to encourage student success,” said John C. Blakley, CEO at Unicon. “Adding a mobile component will boost this success by connecting students to valuable information in the campus portal no matter their location, helping the university to better serve its students.”

About uPortal
uPortal is a secure, horizontal integration platform designed to integrate and aggregate information from multiple applications. uPortal provides three fundamental components: enterprise framework, portlets (rendered as small windows of content that appear on a portal page), and development tools. uPortal is highly scalable for enterprise deployments and is proven to scale up to at least two million users. The portal features technologies for successful enterprise integration and content aggregation. This includes technologies for a powerful core framework, flexible layouts, interface customization, user experience, authentication and security, portal administration, groups and permissions, and mobile access. Learn more at www.jasig.org/uportal.

About uMobile
uMobile is a new open source initiative designed to bring campus applications, content, and data to mobile devices. The project provides a native app for iPhone™ and Android devices, as well as browser-based content for other smartphones. uMobile enables a single code base to provide both browser-based and native-app functionality, allowing institutions to produce mobile applications in a familiar environment. Learn more at www.jasig.org/umobile.