rSmart

Phoenix, Ariz. (February 27, 2008) –rSmart, the leading full-service provider of open source software solutions for education, today announced a new collaboration with Sun Microsystems. Together, the two companies will develop Kuali-based solutions that are certified to optimally run on Sun’s collection of systems and open source infrastructure software including Solaris™, MySQL, GlassFish™, OpenSSO and OpenESB. The first Kuali solution certified will be the Kuali Financial System (KFS) with other supported Kuali solutions to follow. The rSmart / Sun collaboration enables universities and colleges interested in deploying Kuali open source software to have full confidence in the solution’s ability to handle enterprise computing demands with ease.

rSmart brings to the collaboration leadership within the Kuali Community as well as demonstrated expertise with Kuali software, particularly KFS and Kuali Enterprise Workflow (KEW). As part of the initiative rSmart will package and support Kuali software distributions certified to run on Sun hardware and software.

 “Perceived lack of support is often cited as a primary reason why colleges and universities do not consider adopting open source software solutions like Kuali,” said Chris Coppola, CEO, rSmart. “With this collaboration schools no longer have this barrier to worry about. Sun and rSmart together will support entire Kuali solutions, from the hardware all the way up to, and including, the Kuali application.”

Demonstrating its commitment to the education market, Sun Microsystems will help establish several institutions as Sun Centers of Excellence (COE) for these Kuali solutions. COEs will play an important role in leading supported Kuali adoption on Sun infrastructure.

“This collaboration, coupled with Kuali open source software, will help colleges and universities cut the costs of administrative computing while benefiting from enterprise applications built for education by education,” said Gary Geramanis, Global Account Manager, Sun Microsystems. “By relying on Sun and rSmart institutions will be able to deploy Kuali software with the highest level of confidence. We are pleased to be a part of this important initiative.”

About Kuali:

The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit organization responsible for sustaining and evolving a comprehensive suite of open source administrative software that meets the needs of all Carnegie Class institutions of higher education. Its members are colleges, universities, commercial firms and interested organizations that share a common vision of open, modular, and distributed systems for administrative computing. The Kuali Foundation manages a growing portfolio of enterprise software applications for colleges and universities, such as Kuali Financial System (KFS), Kuali Research Administration (KRA), Kuali Endowment Management (KEM), Kuali Rice, which includes enterprise workflow and other Kuali infrastructure, and Kuali Student System (KSS). Foundation staff coordinate the activities of Foundation members for critical software development activities such as source code control, release engineering, packaging, documentation, project management, software testing and quality assurance, conference planning, and educating and assisting members of the Kuali Commercial Affiliate program. Please visit www.kuali.org for more information.

About The rSmart Group:

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