News

Harris Schools Solutions is excited to announce that Via Purchasing (for schools) is now in full BETA testing. Both Rocky Mountain School District (BC), and Fort McMurray School District (AB) have launched Via Purchasing to select schools in their respective districts. Rocky Mountain is running on IE on Windows and Fort McMurray is running on Firefox for Mac! The initial feedback from both districts has been extremely positive.

 

A school User at Fort McMurray offers this insight,“As you know I have been using it quite a bit this week...I love it, it is very user friendly.”

 

Harris looks forward to implementing Via Purchasing in your District soon!

 

SDS Software, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Harris School Solutions, announces the implementation of a live school beta site as part of a customer-driven migration to Windows. The migration, scheduled for all SDS products, became a priority following the Harris acquisition of SDS Software in January 2010.


Five school districts are expected to go live by the end of January 2011. To minimize the impact to district staff during the migration, most of the operational tasks will remain unchanged. School IT departments should note the following new features, such as encrypted access from the HSS Help Desk, network backups for departmental demand backups, generic LDAP support, and SMTP authentication.

Schollenberger says the migration will also bring Active Directory integration for authentication, and further stated that the project will "lay the foundation for our continued migration."

The next two phases of the Windows migration will encompass the addition of a new Graphical User Interface (GUI) front end and SQL Server. Completion dates for Phase 2 and Phase 3 are not currently available, but Schollenberger expects to complete the initial release of the GUI front end sometime in 2011.

"Via Purchasing is the focus right now for completion at the end of Q1, 2011," said Schollenberger.

SDS Software offers a full portfolio of products and services for Canadian school boards, including human resources, payroll, accounting, and purchasing management solutions. Information on products is available at www.sdssoftware.com/products-and-services.

The full line of Harris School Solutions software provides numerous options for student information, school nutrition, school business, employee time and attendance, adult-vocational education, data backup/recovery and transportation management. View our product line at: www.harris-schoolsolutions.com/solutions.


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CONTACT:
For more information regarding this press release or product availability, please contact us via email at k12solutions@harriscomputer.com, or complete the online inquiry form at www.harris-schoolsolutions.com/contact.

Vancouver, British Columbia – October 19, 2010 - SDS Software, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Harris School Solutions, is pleased to announce that School District 70 (Alberni) has invested in eFunds and Via for Schools financial solutions as part of their mission to improve educational outcomes.

The school district, located on Vancouver Island, has a student population of 4,133. Procurement of eFunds and Via for Schools is in line with district-wide plans to optimize information technology resources.

"The decision to migrate to Via for Schools aligned district IT resources and supported IT training on VMWARE and Virtualization," said the district. "The system architecture provides parallel, redundant servers and eliminates duplication of hardware, resources and server support."

Via for Schools and eFunds are both web-based accounting solutions. eFunds interfaces with the district general ledger. It is GAAP compliant, and features accounting process automation and comprehensive reports. Via for Schools provides access to manage school funds, while maintaining internal controls for the district audits. Via modules include: Via eFunds, Via Accounting and Via Purchasing (currently in development with a delivery date of December 2010).

Additionally, the district purchased a virtual server to centralize and further optimize the school's business operations.

"The new virtual server infrastructure brings all of our network resources to a central server, reduces management of servers across the district and provides a common, consistent and stable environment for all applications, including accounting and purchasing."

According to School District 70 (Alberni), plans are in place to upgrade and update the district server infrastructure, as well as standardize workstations to meet district-wide IT goals.

SDS offers a full portfolio of products and services for Canadian school boards, including human resources, payroll, accounting, and purchasing management solutions. Information on products is available at www.sdssoftware.com/products-and-services.

The full line of Harris School Solutions software provides numerous options for student information, school nutrition, school business, employee time and attendance, adult-vocational education, data backup/recovery and transportation management. View our product line at: www.harris-schoolsolutions.com/solutions.



Contact:
For more information regarding this press release or product availability, please contact us via email at k12solutions@harriscomputer.com, or complete the online inquiry form at www.harris-schoolsolutions.com/contact.

Toronto, Ontario – January 25, 2010 - Constellation Software Inc. (“Constellation”) (TSX: CSU) today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary Harris Computer Systems (“Harris”), a leading provider of financial, customer and student information management software solutions for utilities, local governments and school districts, purchased SDS Software (“SDS”). 

 

SDS offers a full portfolio of products and services for Canadian school boards including: human resources, payroll, fund accounting, and student activity fund management.  As a result of the transaction, SDS will be consolidated within Harris School Solutions, the Harris operating division focused on administrative solutions for K-12 school districts throughout North America. 

 

Jerry Canada, General Manager of Harris School Solutions commented, “SDS is a significant milestone in the Harris School Solutions growth plan as it expands our presence into the Canadian market. We will look to complement the SDS product portfolio with our own student management solutions and continue to compete for new business throughout Canada.”

 

“The SDS team brings excellent domain expertise in both back office systems and web development. They provide a solid foundation for us to grow in this market,” said Canada.  Harris will continue to develop, service, and support the SDS product line from the current Vancouver, BC office. 

 

“SDS has provided administrative software and services to Canadian school districts for 23 years and the acquisition by Harris is an exciting and logical step in the evolution of our organization”, said Priscilla McDonald, President and CEO of SDS Software.  “As one of the 50 Best Managed Companies in Canada, Harris brings additional resources to our continued commitment to our clients. In Harris we have found the best partner to maintain and enhance the SDS tradition of quality software and exemplary service.”

 

 

About Constellation:

Constellation acquires, manages and builds vertical market software businesses that provide mission critical software solutions. Constellation's common shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "CSU". Further information about Constellation may be obtained from the Company's web site at http://www.csisoftware.com

 

  

About Harris:

Harris is a wholly owned subsidiary of Constellation and is a leading provider of financial management and Customer Information Systems (CIS) software solutions. Since 1976, Harris has focused on providing feature-rich and robust turnkey solutions to all levels of local government, public power and water entities as well as school districts throughout North America. Harris' focus is on creating long-term relationships with our customers and ensuring that we meet the changing needs of our customers over time. For further information on Harris Computer Systems, please visit our website at http://www.harriscomputer.com, or call 888-847-7747, for Harris School Solutions visit http://www.harris-schoolsolutions.com.

 

 

About SDS:

SDS is a leading provider of software and services for K-12 education. Each of our products is designed and developed exclusively for Canadian school districts. We help our clients continuously improve the administration and management of their organizations by providing exceptional quality software and customer service.  SDS Software is based in Vancouver, BC and services education clients across Canada. For further information on SDS, please visit our website at http://www.sdssoftware.com, or call 888-737.4900.

 

 

For further information, contact:

 

Constellation Software Inc.

John Billowits, Chief Financial Officer

Tel: (416) 861-2279

info@csisoftware.com

www.csisoftware.com

 

Harris Computer Systems

Jerry Canada Jr., General Manager, Harris School Solutions                                                       

(716) 207-8005

jcanada@harriscomputer.com

www.harriscomputer.com