The University of North Carolina Deploys Centra to Provide Virtual Team Support to Global Executive MBA Program

Business Wire, Jan 7, 2003

Business/Technology Editors

LEXINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 7, 2003

Centra (NASDAQ: CTRA), the leading provider of software and services for real-time communication and collaboration, today announced that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School is using Centra technology to provide a virtual team collaboration environment in support of its innovative OneMBA(R) program.

OneMBA, a groundbreaking executive MBA program, brings together an executive class comprising an unprecedented worldwide network of business leaders that learn together. The class completes a rigorous 21-month program - a shared global core curriculum taught simultaneously on four continents at each of the five partner schools, and in residential sessions that bring together the entire worldwide class in locations around the world, to learn through direct experience in emerging and developed markets. Between residential sessions, geographically dispersed executives in OneMBA continue their learning through distance education and teamwork. OneMBA is jointly developed and delivered through an equal partnership between UNC and top-ranked business schools in Brazil, Hong Kong, Mexico and the Netherlands.

The Center for Innovation in Learning (CIL) at UNC Kenan-Flagler selected Centra as the Web-based collaborative environment for students who are located all over the world and meet weekly in online teams to collaborate on projects. In addition, the CIL now has the ability to virtually present papers and studies from the convenience of their desktop. The Centra platform also allows professors to provide virtual office hours and gives technology team members who support the program the ability to meet online for planning and problem solving on a weekly basis. All of these sessions are powered by distance learning technology and online teamwork capabilities from Centra that enable completion of assignments between course sessions and more effective, convenient student and faculty collaboration from anywhere in the world.

Designed for working executives, OneMBA offers once-a-month physical classes augmented by Centra sessions, lessening travel demands and trips abroad by minimizing time away from the home and office and maximizing global learning experiences. The five renowned institutions that make up the program include:

-- The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Faculty of Business Administration, Hong Kong SAR, China;

-- Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Escola de Administracao de Empresas de Sao Paulo (FGV-EAESP), Brazil;

-- Tec de Monterrey's Graduate School of Business Administration and Leadership (EGADE-ITESM), Mexico;

-- Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), The Netherlands;

-- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), Kenan-Flagler Business School, United States.

"We selected the Centra solution because it offered us fully integrated voice-over-IP capabilities that greatly reduced our telephone related expenses. And with Centra's robust application sharing, we are able to train dispersed colleagues on complicated applications without the expense and time investment associated with traveling to a training facility," said Catherine Gihlstorf, Program Director for the CIL at UNC Kenan-Flagler. "Centra helps us capitalize on our core competency of designing customized, innovative MBA programs by providing state-of-the-art technology for live, collaborative learning that is a viable and valuable software application for our students."

Scaleable Software Solution for Enterprise Collaboration

Used by more than 1,000 companies, government agencies, and universities worldwide, Centra's scalable application suite provides workflow modules for sales, marketing, and training that enable more efficient and cost-effective business communication over the Web. CentraOne(TM) brings together voice, video, data, and graphics in easy-to-use interfaces for Web conferencing, meetings, and virtual classrooms that can be deployed on-site or accessed through a secure global service network. Centra integrates with existing infrastructure to help organizations align enterprise IT strategies with key business processes to enhance productivity, lower costs, and drive revenue. Centra's solutions are available in 13 language editions and in 29 countries worldwide.

"We are pleased that the prestigious University of North Carolina OneMBA Program has put its trust into Centra to provide a robust collaboration environment for its globally dispersed student population," said Paul Daly, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Centra. "This program exemplifies what universities can do to augment traditional classroom learning using a state-of-the-art, Web-based collaborative learning applications. CentraOne provides a complete solution that can empower international executives beyond what was previously possible to conveniently augment their education with the best programs available and learn from top experts in their field to gain key business skills and knowledge, regardless of their location."