Penn State University

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Penn State University, with 24 campuses and 80,000 students, wanted to make its huge storehouse of information readily available to students, faculty, and staff. First-generation web applications were mainly designed as stand-alone systems, and simply combining legacy mainframe systems with client-server functions quickly crashed key business applications during heavy usage.

Penn State undertook a massive internet development project designed to give students and staff direct access to its wealth of institutional information. Dubbed eLion, the new system would deliver a custom search engine, a hypertext listing of suggested academic and advising references, open access to student information systems, an artificial intelligence-based advising service, and a variety of support services for faculty, staff and students.