Universitas 21 Global, a Singapore-based online university promoted by an international consortium of sixteen leading universities, has announced that Satyam Computer Services has started implementing a virtual university portal and a student administration system solution for it.

It took about six months for Satyam to design and implement the systems.

SAS, developed on the PeopleSoft platform, would enable U21G to automate the entire process  - from enrollments to examinations, graduation and career counseling.

The online e-learning portal being developed by Satyam is expected to have thousands of simultaneous users.

Announcing this in Hyderabad at a select press briefing, Vijay Srinivasan, vice president (sales) of U21G, said the online university is a 50:50 joint venture between Universitas 21, an international consortium of 16 distinguished universities and Thomas Learning, promoted by the $8 billion Thomson Corporation.

The two partners have invested $25 million each and are prepared to make more investment for technology enhancements, he added.

"By 2010, more than 32 million students are expected to seek higher education courses from the Asia-Pacific region. The brick-and-mortar kind of institutions could not cope up with the demand from these students. In this situation, online universities assume importance," Srinivasan said.

Over 20 million of the above mentioned student figure will hail from China and India. Hence, we are primarily targeting students of these two countries, he added.

The university expects about 500 students from all over the world to enroll during the current calendar year. U21G has received 181 applications from India so far, of which 25 were offered a seat.

Explaining Satyam's role as a technology partner, Shiv Kumar, director (IT applications) of U21G, said the company was involved in the creation of the e-learning integrated solution, including the development of a learning management system that serves as a virtual classroom for students and acts as an interface between students and the faculty. The personalised portal for the university was developed using the Broadvision platform.