Datatel

Datatel, Inc.

Type	Private
Industry	Higher Education Technology Solutions
Fate	Merged with SunGard Higher Education
Successor	Ellucian
Founded	1968 (1968)
Headquarters	Fairfax, Virginia, USA
Key people	Jeff Ray, President/CEO
Revenue	$138.0 Million USD (2009)
Number of employees	533
Slogan	How higher education does business
Website	http://www.ellucian.com

Datatel, Inc. was a private company that provided fully integrated software and professional services to build enterprise education platforms for higher education until it combined with its competitor SunGard Higher Education to form Ellucian in 2012. Datatel was headquartered in Fairfax, VA.

With 533 employees, Datatel had more than 799 client institutions located in the United States, Canada, Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and Bermuda.

History

Datatel was founded by Tom Davidson in 1968 as a data processing service bureau. The company began in the mezzanine of a suburban office supply store outside of Washington, DC. A few years later, Datatel began performing data processing for banks. In 1973, the company grew substantially when Davidson merged Datatel with Data Technology Corporation, owned by Ken Kendrick. Datatel focused on higher education since 1979.

Beginning in 1992, the company was led by Russ Griffith, who died on August 7, 2006. Under Russ's leadership in 2005, Datatel’s executive team – backed by Thoma Cressey Equity Partners and Trident Capital – signed an agreement to acquire the company from Davidson and Kendrick. While no longer involved with the company to this day, Davidson went on to co-found the Balance Bar food company in 1992 and Kendrick is a managing partner and co-owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team. In 2004, Datatel acquired the LiquidMatrix Corporation, a Buffalo-based provider of student recruiting and alumni outreach Web-based software.

Datatel was acquired in December 2009 by private equity company Hellman & Friedman.

In March 2012, Datatel was combined with SunGard Higher Education to form a new company, Ellucian.

Timeline

• 1972: Datatel released their first product, the Silent 700, a programmable data terminal
• 1975: Became the first East Coast Microdata dealer
• 1976: Began development of TOPS, the Total Office product system, later to be known as ASSETS
• 1979: Became first PRIME information dealer and began selling solutions for colleges and universities
  • Willamette University became first Datatel client
  • Development of Colleague began
• 1986: San Francisco office opened
• 1987: Moved to current headquarters in the Fair Lakes area of Fairfax, Virginia
• 1988: Sold 100th Colleague client
• 1989: Changed to multiplatform UNIX
• 1990: Datatel Scholar's Foundation established
• 1991 Announced products on IBM and Sequent
  • First Canadian client - University of Waterloo
• 1996: Introduced Client/Server
• 2002: Datatel Center for Institutional Effectiveness(DCIE) formed
• 2004: Acquired LiquidMatrix Corporation
• 2005: Management buyout of founders
• 2006: Longtime President and CEO Russ Griffith passes away
• 2007: Datatel reached 39th year of consecutive growth
  • Releases ActiveCampus Portal, built on Microsoft SharePoint
• 2009: Datatel was acquired in December 2009 by private equity company Hellman & Friedman.
• 2010: Datatel announces revenue of $138m in 2009
• 2012: Combined with SunGard Higher Education to form Ellucian.

Awards

• Recipient of the U.S. Senate Productivity and Quality Award (SPQA) for Virginia in 1997
• Selected as one of The Washingtonian magazine’s Great Places to Work in 2001, 2003, 2005, and 2007
• Recipient of the 2003 CARE Award for mid-sized companies as presented by the Northern Virginia Family Services organization
• Recipient of the 2003 National Capital Business Ethics Award from The National Capital Chapter of the Society of Financial Service Professionals
• Recipient of the University of Maryland’s Smith Digital Economy Award in 2008
• Top finalist for Microsoft Partner of the Year Award in Information Worker Solutions, Portals, and Collaboration in 2008
• Named Microsoft Public Sector Education Partner of the Year 2009, developing an enterprise CRM solution, expanding into the Teaching and Learning market segment, and introducing a mobile application for administrative and academic information on the go

Products

• Datatel Colleague - an administrative software suite based on a single-source technology approach, coupled with data-driven, rules-based architecture. The five components of Colleague are:
  • CORE
  • ST (Student)
  • CF (Colleague Finance)
  • CA (Colleague Advancement)
  • HR (Human Resources)
• Datatel Mobile Access (MOX)
• Datatel Portal
• Datatel Recruiter
• Datatel WCMS
• Datatel Intelligent Learning Platform (ILP)

Professional services

• Administrative and Application Management
• Consulting
• Datatel Center for Institutional Effectiveness (DCIE) - provides strategic planning programs for administrators in higher education
• Institutional Effectiveness
• Professional Executive Services
• Strategic Planning and Project Management
• Support and Self-Service
• Training and Education
• Web Site Design

Related information

Datatel Users' Group, or DUG, is a professional association of members from Datatel's client institutions. DUG holds annual and regional conferences.

In 1990, Datatel formed the Datatel Scholars Foundation to award scholarships to outstanding undergraduate and graduate students attending Datatel client institutions. The Foundation has awarded over 3,700 scholarships totaling more than $5.5 million.

Reviews

A review from 2013 at [1] gives a bald-faced view of Datatel Colleague. The software uses Telnet for communications, works with 80x24 text screens, and has a very simple database system that is prone to locking problems.

Additional References

1. Company website
2. "Datatel Offers Web-Enabled Management Software," Campus Technology, August 12, 2002
3. "Company Profile for Datatel, Inc." Reuters, 2008
4. "Great Places to Work: The List," Washingtonian magazine, 2005
5. "Microsoft Announces 2008 Partner of the Year Awards Finalists and Winners," 2008
6. "Great Places to Work: Where to Feel at Home," Washingtonian magazine, 2007