University of Southern California Selects Unicon Academus Portal Suite; Scalability and Seamless Integration Features Prove Valuable to USC

Business Wire, July 7, 2004

CHANDLER, Ariz. -- Unicon Academus Portal Suite has been selected by University of Southern California to provide and maintain its portal platform. Beginning in the 2004 Fall Semester, USC will launch the Academus Portal Suite. This collection includes Academus Portal, an enterprise-portal solution, and Academus Collaborative Groupware, a powerful, enterprise-wide collaborative system that is fully integrated with the portal.

"We're proud to welcome the University of Southern California to our family of Academus customers," said John Blakley, Unicon CEO. "Academus will provide an integration platform that will deliver the institution's many services and the functionality it needs to be successful in a highly competitive environment."

Candy Borland, director of Web services for the University of Southern California, said, "One of the things that attracted us to Academus was the fact that our potential base could grow to over 600,000 users. We wanted to have something that we could scale up in a big way without incurring huge costs in software."

USC's goal was to find a single solution that offered multifunctional services for all its constituents. The institution required a portal platform that could effectively integrate its extensive campus programs and meet the needs of many different audiences. Borland added, "The portal will be the focal point for the online USC experience. We want to personalize and streamline this experience. The initial focus of our efforts is going to be a student portal, but we expect to extend the portal quickly to provide services for faculty, staff, and eventually alumni and prospective students. We will use the portal to improve communications and online collaboration within the Trojan family. And we expect to smooth out the user experience with some of our administrative processes by integrating backend systems through the portal."

About USC

The University of Southern California is one of the world's leading private research universities. Located in the heart of Los Angeles, USC's two campuses are home to the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and 17 professional schools, as well as one of the largest teaching hospitals in the country. Founded in 1880, Southern California's oldest private research university can attribute much of its success to excellence in teaching and research, a deep and abiding commitment to public service, and a loyal educational community, the Trojan Family.

About Unicon Inc.

Since 1993, Unicon has been designing, building, and managing technology solutions for colleges, universities, schools, and corporations worldwide. Unicon solutions are based on open-source technology to increase productivity while reducing costs. Unicon Inc. is the leading independent provider of enterprise portal, collaborative, learning and integration technology for higher education institutions. Unicon is the leading commercial supporter of the uPortal open-source Web portal initiative, developed under the direction of the JA-SIG organization. Unicon also maintains and supports applications of the Cisco Networking Academy Program. Former employees of Arizona State University founded Unicon. For more information, please visit Unicon on the Web at www.unicon.net.