Vivantech Announces General Availability of Ekualiti™: The First Complete Cloud Platform of Kuali Software Aimed at Higher Education
San Diego, CA (PRWEB) May 28, 2014 -- Reducing time and resource requirements for Kuali implementations, Ekualiti Suite Offers Comprehensive, Cloud-based ERP Aimed at Higher Ed Institutions
Vivantech, a leader in consulting and development of enterprise grade, open-source software for higher education and a premier Kuali Commercial Affiliate, today announced the general availability of Ekualiti™, the first cloud platform designed to host the entire suite of Kuali-based ERP software.
Until now, the high cost of commercial ERP software has been positioned beyond the reach of many small- and medium-size colleges and universities. Ekualiti is the first cost-effective alternative to proprietary ERP software that blends the economy of open source Kuali software with instantly-available functionality. Modules available now include Ekualiti KC for research and grant administration, and Ekualiti Rice for business process automation.
Designed specifically for the business process needs of higher educational institutions, Ekualiti addresses the need for an affordable, comprehensive ERP solution that is quick to deploy, highly scalable, and easy to use and navigate. Ekualiti gives customers the comfort of an open-source solution with an open data format and eliminates the licensing fees, annual maintenance fees, and restrictive vendor lock-in typical of proprietary software. These economical features address the need for many higher educational institutions to contain ERP costs as they face increasing budget constraints and demand for quality education at a good value.
“Vivantech clearly understands the challenges that colleges and universities face as they automate their business processes,” said Kent Brooks, Director of IT at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming. “Small colleges like ours feel the pressure to reduce licensing costs. Kuali-based software in the cloud helped us overcome our resource limitations, plus it made deployment so much faster.”
Brooks added that Vivantech’s flexible, modular approach to cloud-based Kuali is ideal for schools like Casper College. “We can add capabilities as we go, without having to deploy everything at once. Ekualiti Rice is helping us to reduce our paper-based workflows, and Ekualiti KC is helping us with grants management. We look forward to using other Ekualiti capabilities as we work to operate more efficiently and improve our services.”
“We have been implementing Ekualiti Rice and Ekualiti KC into our ERP system and six months into the process, we’re very happy to be working with Vivantech,” said Dennis Stutes, CTO, Alliant International University. “Vivantech has helped us in account provisioning so we can access third party systems. To provision those accounts for different applications is very complex and is a manually intensive endeavor. Vivantech has adapted to everything we’ve asked and found ways to match our requirements.”
“Many small and mid-size colleges and universities recognize the cost and control advantages of open-source software, but don’t have the IT resources to make it work for their institutions,” said Randy Ozden, Vivantech President and Chief Executive Officer. “Vivantech has completed many Kuali implementations over the years. We came to understand that if we could deliver a user-friendly interface and rich functionality instantly, right from the cloud, we could make open source software much more approachable and feasible for a broad base of schools. By bringing Kuali to the cloud, we’re able to provide colleges and universities the business process automation they need at a much more affordable price.”
Ozden added that even large universities will find Ekualiti’s UI, upgrade tools, flexibility, and scalability very attractive for their Kuali implementations as they consider migrating some business systems to the cloud over time.
Unified Suite of ERP Software
Based on open-source Kuali software and built on the Amazon AWS platform, Ekualiti delivers secure, reliable, and scalable higher educational administrative software solutions. Ekualiti SaaS packages include the Ekualiti Rice workflow and middleware platform and any combination of Ekualiti core components. All Ekualiti modules have a consistent look, and the modular Ekualiti suite can be deployed in conjunction with existing on-premise or SaaS ERP applications, giving colleges and universities optimal flexibility to move any or all of their ERP processes to the cloud.
Ekualiti™ Rice (available now)
Ekualiti™ Rice, a Kuali-based workflow and middleware platform, is the foundation of the Ekualiti™ Suite. Ekualiti™ Rice adds rich functionality to Kuali Rice, including an enhanced user interface, dashboard-style portal and easy-to-use, menu-based navigation. Another key feature of Ekualiti™ Rice is its visual workflow, an intuitive graphical editor that makes it easy for anyone to build, deploy, and modify forms and workflows without writing a single line of code. Ekualiti™ Rice enables institutions to control access to data through its built-in user database, or through an out-of-the-box SAML authentication integration and LDAP directory integration.
Ekualiti™ KC (Kuali Coeus) research and grant administration system (available now)
Ekualiti™ KC builds upon the comprehensive research administration features of Kuali Coeus. In addition to all of the enhancements available in Ekualiti™ Rice, Ekualiti™ KC provides numerous out-of-the box reports integrated directly into the web interface through a custom reporting framework based on the open-source BIRT reporting tool. Opportunity lookup and system-to-system submission through Grants.gov is also available out-of-the-box.
Ekualiti™ KHR (Kuali HR & Payroll) time and attendance system (coming in 2014)
Ekualiti™ KFS (Kuali Financial System) financial system (coming in 2014)
Ekualiti™ KS (Kuali Student) student information system (release date TBA)
Ekualiti™ OLE (Kuali Open Library Environment) (release date TBA)
Launch a Private Ekualiti™ Trial with Vivantech’s 1ClickLaunch
To take Ekualiti™ for a test drive, visit ekualiti.com/signup. Vivantech’s proprietary 1ClickLaunch was designed to facilitate launching a private Ekualiti trial in the cloud.
About Vivantech
Vivantech is a premier consultant and developer of enterprise grade, open- source Kuali ERP software available on-premise or SaaS. Vivantech also offers expertise in technology consulting, quality assurance, training, and project management. Vivantech’s innovative solutions are used in higher education, research institutions, and multi-billion-dollar non-profit organizations. Vivantech is privately held and headquartered in San Diego, CA. For more information about Vivantech, visit vivantech.com.
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Press Contacts:
Jan Wiedrick-Kozlowski
Commstrat for Vivantech
+1 585 392-7878
jan(at)commstrat(dot)com
Rich Mullikin
Commstrat for Vivantech
+1 925 779-9115
rich(at)commstrat(dot)com
Wynne Kokka, Commstrat, +1 (510) 658-8870, [email protected]
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