After completing a tender process and proof of concept, Sydney-based software company MXL has entered into a $3 million contract with Tasmania's department of education (DoE) for the supply of its .Net-based eMinerva student management system to all state government schools.

Customization work has already commenced and will be accelerated in order to meet the pilot date of February 2007. A statewide roll-out to some 214 schools is slated for the second half of 2007.

According to MXL, its solutions were been designed to allow easy development and ensure customers can maintain currency with evolving education agendas across states and countries.

"Unlike other systems on the market, eMinerva is a full Web-based enterprise ready solution offering the DoE flexibility and simplicity in deployment and maintenance," the company said in a statement.

"Schools only require a Web browser to access the full range of functionality required for school administration."

MXL's eMinerva will manage over 55,000 students across the 214 schools. All of the company's software development is done in Sydney.

The department's former director of information management Max Gentle said the reasons for selecting MXL were due to the software architecture's capacity for "long-term" development, and unlike US or UK-based software which required significant customization at a very high price, the MXL solution met over 80 percent of the department's needs "out of the box".

Customization was required only for some specific needs of the department.

According to MXL, a number of states are looking at replacing their existing student management systems, many of which have been in use for 20 years.

The company claims to be involved in another Australian state-wide tender "materially larger than Tasmania", and several other tenders for state or regional Catholic dioceses, similar in size and magnitude to Tasmania.

MXL's head of government and partner relations Matt Tutaki said the contract represents the coming of age of Web-based solutions and shows local companies are at the forefront of developing solutions for the education sector.