March 2002 — Industry Perspective

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Leveraging a Digitally Enhanced Education Through an Open Campus

Technology has undoubtedly revolutionized the way students research and study, given teachers new tools to communicate concepts and ideas, and helped administrators manage complex institutions. But have educational institutions yet realized the full benefits of the digital revolution? There is a pervasive sense that they have not. Computers and computer networks have been complex and expensive. They needed experts to run them and were difficult to adapt to individual needs. And teachers were too busy teaching their core subjects to devote time to difficult technologies.

Schools learned the hard way that investing in computers without devoting equal resources to their maintenance and infrastructure resulted in an expensive mishmash of devices - from old computers, through Microsoft Windows XP to wireless devices - none of which fulfilled their potential. But things are changing. Sun Microsystems, which got its start 20 years ago at Stanford University, is one of the few companies that has consistently devoted time, resources and creativity to thousands of educational institutions. Our guiding motto - the network is the computer - inspires our commitment to eliminating the digital divide by providing the tools that every student, teacher and administrator needs.

Our products have long been the technological backbone of renowned educational institutions, and now we are taking our efforts one step further. With Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE), we are leveraging the Internet to enable a new level of e-learning that realizes the promise of a digitally enhanced education. Sun ONE is the vision, architecture, platform and expertise that helps our customers leverage their information assets for building and deploying services on demand. Four main components make up the Sun ONE platform: iPlanet, Solaris Operating Environment, Forte Tools and Java. By supporting services on demand, the Sun ONE platform enables campuses to provide information, data and applications to anyone, anytime, anywhere, on any device. Hundreds of schools, colleges, universities and research institutes have already found that the unlimited possibilities of Sun ONE can save money and support integration across the entire organization.

Implemented for Education

Sun ONE is open and supports industry standards, so administrators can interoperate with existing systems now and with new add-ons in the future. For example, if you already have Apache running as your application server, and are not worried about scalability or other product concerns, you can keep it running while you implement new pieces on the Sun ONE platform. When implemented in education, Sun ONE enables an inclusive and comprehensive Web-based educational environment that adapts to the specific needs of students, teachers and administrators. It integrates information across the network - from coursework to calendars, from reports to research, from football tickets to parking fines, and from attendance records to budget management.

When enrolling for school, a student might register for several book-buying services, such as a campus bookstore or Amazon.