Salesforce.org Launches Higher Education Data Architecture (HEDA)
Salesforce.org, the philanthropic arm of Salesforce.com, today released the Higher Education Data Architecture (HEDA), which provides the foundation for the connected campus to help colleges and universities connect with students, alumni, faculty, and staff.
HEDA is an open-source data architecture tailored specifically for higher education institutions. It enables schools to rapidly deploy Salesforce's CRM platform to gain a 360-degree view of students as they progress throughout their academic journeys and beyond.
"We developed HEDA with our community, engaging customers, partners, and industry leaders to help us create a solution that addresses some of the toughest problems facing higher education," said Rob Acker, CEO of Salesforce.org, in a statement. "Now, our higher education customers will be able to better manage everything from recruiting to student success to fundraising."
"Higher education is experiencing a period of unprecedented change. Colleges and universities seeking to thrive, or even simply survive, in this environment must find new ways to innovate and deliver high-quality, highly personalized services to students," said Nicole Engelbert, director of research and analysis at Ovum, in a statement. "HEDA enables institutions to execute their student experience strategies more rapidly by leveraging a best practice data model developed by institutions and delivered out-of-the-box by Salesforce. Ovum believes that HEDA sets important standards that have the potential to transform how higher education manages the student experience across the entire lifecycle.
The University of Miami is one of the schools already using Salesforce.org's HEDA.
"Higher Ed has been waiting for this type of standard data architecture, and we are excited to implement HEDA as part of our connected campus vision with Salesforce.org," said Jack George, deputy chief information officer and associate vice president at the University of Miami Information Technology, in a statement. "Leveraging this new, community-driven architecture on our campus will allow the university to collaborate more effectively with our peers and to drive innovation in this space."
Salesforce.org's HEDA can be downloaded as a managed package from the Salesforce AppExchange. The open-source code for HEDA is also available on GitHub. There is no additional cost to use HEDA beyond the Salesforce.com subscription, although HEDA does require subscriptions to Enterprise Edition or higher.