Datatel, Inc. is a private company that provides fully integrated software and professional services to build Enterprise Education Platforms for higher education. Founded in 1968 by Tom Davidson. It was originally a data processing service company, but has focused on higher education since 1979. Datatel focuses on building Strategic Academic Enterprises for colleges and universities that support five cross-functional domains essential for achieving institutional and student success: Strategic Enrollment Management, Strategic Planning, Institutional Advancement and Marketing, Teaching and Learning through its Intelligent Learning Platform, and Performance and Operational Management. Datatel is headquartered in Fairfax, VA, with second office in Buffalo, NY. With 533 employees, Datatel has more than 799 client institutions located in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, Guam

Guam

Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States located in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. Guam is listed as one of 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United...

, Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

, American Samoa

American Samoa

American Samoa is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the South Pacific Ocean, southeast of the sovereign state of Samoa...

, and Bermuda

Bermuda

Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...

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

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

Ken Kendrick

Earl G. "Ken" Kendrick Jr. is a baseball executive with the National League Arizona Diamondbacks. He became part-owner with the team's inception in 1995 and Managing General Partner in 2004, replacing Jerry Colangelo after a lengthy disagreement over Colangelo's role with the franchise he founded;...

. 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

Balance bar

Balance Bar, sometimes styled as balance bar, is the brand name of a nutritional energy bar based on the 40-30-30 dietary principle, that is, a diet containing 40% carbohydrate, 30% protein and 30% dietary fat. The 40-30-30 nutritional philosophy was popularized by Dr. Barry Sears, a biochemist,...

 food company in 1992 and Kendrick is a managing partner and co-owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks

Arizona Diamondbacks

The Arizona Diamondbacks are a professional baseball team based in Phoenix. They play in the West Division of Major League Baseball's National League. From 1998 to the present, they have played in Chase Field...

 baseball team. In 2004, Datatel acquired the LiquidMatrix Corporation, a Buffalo-based provider of student recruiting and alumni outreach Web-based software.

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
  Unix
  Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
  
  
• 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
• 2007: Datatel reached 39th year of consecutive growth
• 2009: Datatel was acquired in December 2009 by private equity company Hellman & Friedman.
• 2010: Datatel announces revenue of $138m in 2009
  • Datatel's releases ActiveCampus Portal, built on Microsoft SharePoint

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 Admissions)
  • HR (Human Resources)
• Datatel Advancement
• Datatel Mobile Access (MOX)
• Datatel Portal
• Datatel Recruiter
• Datatel WCMS
• Datatel Intelligent Learning Platform (ILP)

Professional Services

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

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.

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