Press Releases

May 28, 2010: Minerva is pleased to announce it has been awarded a contract to install Infor FMS SunSystems 5.4 accounting software at the GMTO Corporation (GMTO) in Pasadena, CA. GMTO is a private, not-for-profit consortium of institutions from the United States, South Korea and Australia, that will build and operate the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). The GMT project will cost approximately $800 million and take 8 years to complete.

The GMT - the product of more than a century of astronomical research and telescope-building by some of the world's leading research institutions-will open a new window on the universe for the 21st century. Scheduled for completion around 2018, the GMT will have the resolving power of an 80-foot primary mirror - far larger than any other telescope ever built. It will answer many of the questions at the forefront of astrophysics today. The revolutionary GMT will be sited at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile's high-altitude Atacama Desert. The Atacama Desert is the driest desert in the World, making it an ideal location for the telescope due to the lack of clouds and moisture in the atmosphere.

The participating institutions are: the Carnegie Institution for Science; Harvard University; the Smithsonian Institution; Texas A&M University; the University of Arizona; the University of Texas at Austin; the Australian National University; Astronomy Australia Limited; and the Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute.

GMTO wanted a multi-currency accounting system that would handle the project costing and other analytical requirements while minimizing the level of IT support. After reviewing several packages including Microsoft Dynamics (Great Plains and Navision) and Timberline, GMTO chose SunSystems because of its superior analytics and reporting capabilities. Using up to 10 ledger dimensions that are available in SunSystems, GMTO can analyze expenses by: project line item; fund; activity; vendor; country; employee; and purchase order. Using one of the 10 budget ledgers, there is also ample room for storing different budgets relating to the project.