Vivantech Announces General Availability of Ekualiti™: The First Complete Cloud Platform of Kuali Software Aimed at …

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 Vivantechs 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, were 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 weve 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 dont 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, were 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 Ekualitis UI, upgrade tools, flexibility, and scalability very attractive for their Kuali implementations as they consider migrating some business systems to the cloud over time.

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Vivantech Announces General Availability of Ekualiti™: The First Complete Cloud Platform of Kuali Software Aimed at ...