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, D.C. 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. Datatel focused on higher education since 1979. [2]
Beginning in 1992, the company was led by Russ Griffith, who died on August 7, 2006. Under Griffith's leadership 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. [3] Davidson went on to co-found the Balance Bar food company in 1992, [4] and Kendrick became a managing partner of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team. In 2004, Datatel acquired the LiquidMatrix Corporation, [5] a Buffalo-based provider of student recruiting and alumni outreach Web-based software.
Datatel was acquired in December 2009 by private equity company Hellman & Friedman. [6]
In March 2012, Datatel merged with SunGard Higher Education to form Ellucian. [7]
Timeline
- 1972: Released the Silent 700, a programmable data terminal
- 1975: Became the first East Coast Microdata dealer [8]
- 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 [9]
- Development of Colleague began
- 1986: Opened San Francisco office
- 1987: Moved to current headquarters in the Fair Lakes area of Fairfax, Virginia
- 1988: Sold hundredth Colleague client
- 1989: Changed to multiplatform UNIX
- 1990: Established Datatel Scholar's Foundation
- 1991 Announced products on IBM and Sequent platforms
- 1996: Introduced Client/Server
- 2002: Formed Datatel Center for Institutional Effectiveness (DCIE)
- 2004: Acquired LiquidMatrix Corporation
- 2005: Management buyout of founders
- 2006: Longtime president and CEO Russ Griffith died [10]
- 2007: Reached 39th year of consecutive growth [11]
- Released ActiveCampus Portal, built on Microsoft SharePoint [12]
- 2009: Acquired in December 2009 by private equity company Hellman & Friedman. [6]
- 2010: Announced 2009 revenues of $138 million [13]
- 2012: Merged with SunGard Higher Education to form Ellucian [7]
- 2021: Ellucian [7] is acquired by Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners [14]
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