Press Release

Percussion Software, a leading developer of practical software solutions enabling customers to maximize the value and quality of enterprise content, today announced that The University of Rhode Island has selected Percussion's Rhythmyx Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system to improve its content authoring, maintenance and production processes and more efficiently manage its large-scale, multi-site Web presence.

With more than 15,000 students and about 3,000 faculty and staff, The University of Rhode Island is the principal public research and graduate institution in the state of Rhode Island. Its status as a land-grant, sea-grant, and urban-grant institution highlights its traditions of research, teaching, and service in the areas of natural resources, marine sciences, and the urban environment.

URI's Rhythmyx solution will be designed to significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness with which the university communicates its brand – including its extensive Web presence, which includes hundreds of Web sites for colleges, departments, research facilities and other campus organizations – to its many constituencies.

"At URI, our broadening base of content contributors and authors is a big concern, along with the incredible proliferation of Web pages and sites," said Trent Batson, URI's Director of Information and Instructional Technology Services. "Within our College of Arts & Science alone we have over 400 sites. As a mid-sized institution, we can't afford to hand-build sites, keep sites current, perform quality control and handle the growing volumes that we have without automation. We have to leverage very strongly the technical staff we have, and that meant moving to an automated content management system."

"We looked at several competing CMS products, narrowed it down to three and then examined the pros and cons of each product and rated each vendor," added Batson. "As a result of our evaluation, we believe we've found the best overall fit for our needs in Percussion's Rhythmyx."

Among URI's key criteria for selecting Rhythmyx were the following:

• Its ability to automate the content creation and maintenance processes in ways and to degrees that were not possible previously, by providing an automated system for sharing and easily reusing content;
• Ease of use for both technical and non-technical users associated with managing and publishing content, in order to accommodate a broadening base of content contributors and a burgeoning volume of content;
• Improved quality control capabilities, including automatic elimination of bad links and notification of content contributors re: the need to replace outdated content; and,
• Support for the university's evolving Web designs in ways that ensure that information on its Web sites is timely, accurate and with a consistent look-and-feel – with minimal IT intervention.

Because of the broad array of the research conducted at URI, the University has a large amount of Web content for a mid-sized institution, involving thousands of Web domains. URI is planning a long-term program to transition its more than half a million pages of Web content to management under Rhythmyx, while the number of content contributors is expected to grow to more than 200. The university's network encompasses information from eight academic colleges, and hundreds of related administrative and other offices located on its four campuses.

"Content management presents a special challenge in academic environments, where freedom and creativity of individuals, colleges, departments and communities of interest must be supported while also addressing central university objectives," said Barry Reynolds, CEO of Percussion Software. "ECM solutions for universities must assist large, diverse populations of content authors in a cost-effective way that does not require extensive technical IT support staff and big budgets. Moving to Rhythmyx will enable URI to meet these and other demanding requirements that they have for Web publishing."

About The University of Rhode Island

The University of Rhode Island is the state's largest university with an enrollment of about 12,000 undergraduate and 3,000 graduate students on four campuses. With nationally and internationally known faculty engaged in a broad range of teaching, research and outreach activities, URI is renowned in many areas, including biotechnology, oceanography, environmental sciences, engineering, and public health promotion. Outreach is at the core of the University's role as a land grant, sea grant and urban grant university.

At the heart of the University are disciplines that promote students' development as critical, independent thinkers and provide the foundation for more than 100 undergraduate and 80 graduate degree programs. Numerous interdisciplinary research programs in place encourage close student-faculty interaction and hands-on learning opportunities with the University's more than 700 teaching and research faculty.

The University's rural, 1,200-acre main campus is located in Kingston, about 30 miles south of Providence and about six miles from the coast. Other campuses are the 165 acre Narragansett Bay Campus in Narragansett, R.I., the Feinstein Providence Campus in the city of Providence, and the 2,300 acre W. Alton Jones Campus in West Greenwich, R.I.