rSmart Announces New Support and Maintenance Services for Kuali Financial System

Kuali Days VIII, San Antonio, TX, November 17, 2009 – rSmart, the provider of enterprise support for open source application software in education, today announced the launch of its new Kuali Financial System Support and Maintenance offering. After successfully implementing Kuali Financial System this year with Colorado State University, the Naval Postgraduate School, and San Joaquin Delta College, rSmart recognized the growing industry need to provide institutions using Kuali Financial System with ongoing professional software support and maintenance services. Institutions are now able to deploy Kuali Financial System with familiar support assurances—it does not require hiring teams of developers to support open source.

rSmart is pleased to announce that San Joaquin Delta College and the Naval Postgraduate School are the first two customers for its new Kuali Financial System Support and Maintenance offering. They are joining Strathmore University, which has been using an early version of rSmart’s support for two years. rSmart is participating in the Kuali Days VIII Conference being held in San Antonio, Texas this November 17-18, 2009.

"The Kuali Financial System has proven to be an outstanding fit for our institution. As a community college, we have unique needs that are not well addressed by off-the-shelf financial packages from the big vendors,” said Matt Coombs, director, systems development at San Joaquin Delta College. “As you would expect with any robust enterprise system, Kuali Finance System requires a team effort to implement and run. We would have not been able to implement, or more importantly, support and maintain KFS over the long term without rSmart's help. We're pleased to be among rSmart's first Kuali Financial System support customers."

"This year's successful release of the Kuali Financial System 3.0 demonstrates without a doubt the Kuali Community’s capability to build a best-of-breed, enterprise-class financial system for higher education. And now that Colorado State University, San Joaquin Delta College, and the Naval Postgraduate School are running it in production, there is no longer any question about it scaling and performing in a production environment,” said Chris Coppola, founder and CEO of rSmart. “The next question is where will institutions get support and maintenance? Our new support offering provides the assurances most schools need to consider Kuali software. rSmart’s support complements a vital, growing community of institutions to deliver an unprecedented quality of service for this mission critical system.”

Modeled after rSmart’s proven support and maintenance offerings for Sakai, another community source-developed enterprise application, rSmart’s Kuali Financial System support offering provides the critical support services an institution using Kuali Financial System will need, such as technical support, troubleshooting, issue resolution, regular updates, patches, access to documentation & tools, access to rSmart’s certified and tested Kuali Financial System distribution, all offered for an annual subscription fee. Additional support options include:

  • Premium Case Management
  • Advanced Customization
  • Managed IT Services
  • Hosting
  • Advanced Configuration Management

As Kuali expands and matures, rSmart intends to introduce additional support offerings for Kuali Coeus for Research Administration, Kuali RICE, Kuali Student, and more. This will help reduce the complexity and cost of supporting and maintaining Kuali applications over the long term and will enable institutions to get all their Kuali support from a single source. rSmart’s Kuali support program is tailored to be modular so institutions can tailor a support program specific to their needs at the most economical price.

About the Kuali Financial System (KFS)

KFS is a modular financial accounting system developed using the Community Source development model. KFS is a conversion of the Indiana University's Financial Information System (FIS) to the web with enhancements identified by the community development partners. KFS is available under the Educational Community License and can be adopted by colleges and universities without licensing fees.

About the Kuali Community

Kuali is a growing community of universities, colleges, businesses, and other organizations that have partnered to build and sustain open-source administrative software for higher education, by higher education. Kuali software is designed to meet the needs of all sizes of institutions, from land-grant research universities to community colleges. The members of the Kuali Community share a common vision of open, modular, and distributed systems for their software requirements. Kuali software is released under the Educational Community License. For more information, visit: http://www.kuali.org/.

About rSmart

rSmart is the provider of enterprise support for open source application software in education. The company develops, certifies, tests, deploys and supports a suite of enterprise financial and collaboration and learning applications for colleges, universities, and institutions serving grades K-12. As an active member, contributor, and commercial affiliate of open source projects like Kuali and Sakai, rSmart is able to provide its clients with software applications and commercial support specifically designed to meet the unique needs of educational institutions. This collaborative approach allows rSmart to offer open source applications that break the dependence educational institutions have on traditional proprietary software vendors. For more information, visit www.rsmart.com.

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Media Contact:

Joe Waldygo

Ph: (480) 632-5050

Email: jwaldygo@rsmart.com