Last modified: Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Kuali Mobility Enterprise launched by Indiana University, Cornell University, University of Cambridge
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 14, 2011
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Kuali Foundation announced the launch of Kuali Mobility Enterprise as a next generation set of tools to connect mobile devices to a variety of campus systems.
"Students, faculty and staff expect to be able to use their smartphones and tablets to get information and do their work," said Brad Wheeler, Kuali Foundation Chairman and vice president of Information Technology and CIO at Indiana University. "With the maturing of HTML5, campuses can move to the next stage of mobility services without having to expensively develop and maintain custom software apps for each new device. The time is right for a major shift in mobile service capability and economics."
Kuali Mobility software will help campuses connect their many information systems -- library, teaching and learning, administrative, research, bus schedules -- and enterprise data to mobile devices (iPad, Android, Blackberry). The first release is targeted for August 2011.
The rapidly evolving world of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices being used on campuses is creating a huge demand for mobility tools and applications. Coupled with the movement towards eTexts and a growing expectation for "any place, any time, any device service," campuses have a timely opportunity to collaborate and solve this common challenge together.
"For Cornell, Kuali Mobility Enterprise is the right idea at the right time. We have high aspirations for the potential of mobility, but lack the necessary infrastructure. With Kuali Mobility we will have a sustainable, community-based platform and tool set that will accelerate Cornell's progress toward a leading edge platform in a matter of months," said Ted Dodds, CIO and vice president at Cornell University.
"The Kuali Foundation is again providing a means for colleges and universities to collaborate and efficiently share their work with the world," said Jennifer Foutty, executive director of the Kuali Foundation. "Launching Mobility as a project of the foundation provides a proven path to broader adoption and commercial support."
The Kuali Foundation presently has more than 50 institutions and nine commercial firms as members.
The Kuali Foundation has a history of bringing partners together to develop systems that solve common problems. Kuali Mobility Enterprise is the eighth Kuali project, and like all Kuali projects, will be made freely available under the Kuali Foundation's open source license polices. Many of the other Kuali projects such as Kuali Financial and Kuali Rice, already have been successfully implemented at major institutions, ultimately saving those institutions millions of dollars in software costs and ongoing maintenance fees.
"We are very excited to learn of the Kuali Mobile Enterprise work," added John Norman, director of the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies (CARET), University of Cambridge. "It is difficult to underestimate the potential for iPads and similar devices in the learning space, and we look forward to working with the project to extend the Sakai student experience using this platform."
Kuali Mobility Enterprise is based on the evolving Kuali Mobile framework that leverages the best-of-breed, existing open source mobile platforms that enable institutions to provide their constituents with a mobile web gateway to interact with public and/or securely authenticated services. Kuali Mobility Enterprise is the packaging of that mobile platform based on HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. It uses the extensive work from other open source mobile projects like JQuery Mobile and PhoneGap. The Kuali Mobile framework will enable mobile applications to be written, tested, packaged, and delivered to constituents through the mobile web or through an installable app for their particular mobile device via one of the application stores.
The Kuali Mobility initiative has consulted with other institutions, and is exploring opportunities with the University of California to support interoperability, partnership, and potential integration with the UC Mobile Web Framework.
See https://kuali.org/kmobility for more information regarding the Kuali Mobility Enterprise project and ways for institutions to get involved.
Kuali Contact: Jennifer Foutty, jfoutty@kuali.org - 812-345-3948
Indiana University Contact: Nik Osborne, nosborne@iu.edu
Cornell University Contact: Ted Dodds, ted.dodds@cornell.edu
University of Cambridge Contact: John Norman, john@caret.cam.ac.uk
