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Bournemouth University halt project
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Esprit have decided not to continue with the UK distributorship of the Aurora product from
Australian company AIT. Bournemouth University, who decided to trial the system last June, have now pulled out from the development partnership and this has signalled the end of the distributorship with Esprit.
It is understood that non-contractual developments of additional functionality to address the
needs of Bournemouth was the issue. Martin Fiske of Aurora commented that existing contractual commitments to Australian customers were the top priority - a major 100 user
sit was rolled out on time in January - and also that the Bournemouth requirements (Artemail and EDI) for Bournemouth require some localisation as they are not conformant to international standards.
"Aurora ILL development is based on the ISO ILL (10160/10161) protocol and there is every
indication that in the relatively near future XML based technology will replace EDI for communication with library suppliers. Whilst we could add in localisation such as Artemail
afterwards our policy is to build Aurora on a solid international framework first and this widens our whole development scope" says Doug Coulson, Application Development Manager for AIT.
Martin Fisk (Director, Library Automation Design) added "Esprit is no longer a distributor for
AIT. Esprit was the exclusive Aurora distributor for the UK and Ireland but in its purchase of Fenwood Systems they have acquired a competitive product and existing customer base.
Our agreement was being reviewed on this basis alone but the lack of Aurora sales in the UK marketplace and the outcome with Bournemouth University was the impetus for this
distributorship to end. We are currently evaluating alternatives to promote further sales of this exciting product, and to support our existing customers."
Esprit, a newly formed company providing a portfolio of products for the Higher Education
market in the UK, recently took over Fenwood which move, at that point, gave them three library management system products. Libero, the Fenwood offering, will be retained along
with the Lotus Notes based product NOTEbookS.
Whilst this announcement, no doubt clarifies the marketing stance for Esprit's LMS
offerings, it is a setback to all parties, and a warning that a lack of precision in matters of software development is a recipe for disaster.
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