The rSmart Group Announces the rSmart Sakai CLE 2.4
PHOENIX, AZ. (June 11, 2007) -- The rSmart Group, the leading provider of commercial support for open source applications for education, announces the availability of rSmart Sakai CLE 2.4 at the 7th Sakai Conference in Amsterdam today. This represents the newest version of the industry’s first and only commercial distribution of the open source Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE). With it, the company is pleased to make its CLE distribution freely available under the terms of an OSI-approved open source license. Starting in July, the rSmart Sakai CLE may be downloaded in both source code and binary forms from the company’s website.
“The era of protecting proprietary intellectual property [software] and restricting its access to drive value is giving way to a new era of open sharing and collaboration among communities as the primary value creation engine,” said Chris Coppola, President of The rSmart Group. “Companies stuck in the previous era, using restrictive proprietary licenses for their software are putting themselves and their customers at a significant disadvantage—missing out on the collective innovation power of communities like Sakai.”
Coppola continued, “At rSmart, you don’t pay us to acquire the software, but rather for reliable support and maintenance, professional implementation, consulting and training services, and ongoing Sakai development contributions and community involvement. Furthermore, the open source model ensures a sharper focus on client satisfaction and delivering value.”
The rSmart Sakai CLE is a feature-rich, fully scalable, enterprise ready application, unique in its ability to support teaching and learning, project collaboration, group interaction and ePortfolio construction. Based on version 2.4 of the Sakai community code, rSmart Sakai CLE offers an open source collaboration environment that's polished, customizable and fully supported.
“The Sakai community recently released an outstanding eLearning software system in Sakai 2.4, which is truly ready to serve as an alternative to existing systems in the marketplace. To us, Sakai represents a fundamentally new approach to course management systems in which the limit on innovation is not a ‘profit margin’ but simply the creativity and talents of the educators and developers who form the foundation of this growing and dynamic community,” said Josh Baron, Director of Academic Technology and eLearning at Marist College. “We are also impressed with the innovative leadership and contributions that rSmart is providing to the community and view them as a critical resource for institutions looking to adopt Sakai.”
The rSmart Sakai CLE 2.4 will be available for on-site, supported deployments at the end of June. A preview release is available today. Visit http://www.sakaisandbox.com to sign up for an account.
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 and collaborative 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.
About Sakai
The Sakai Project is a landmark venture to create a comprehensive open-source course management, collaboration and online research environment for the education community. Started in 2004 by a collaboration between the University of Michigan, Indiana University, Stanford and MIT, the project is now run by the Sakai Foundation and comprised of over 100 members representing universities, colleges and institutions of learning around the world.
Please visit www.sakaiproject.org for more information.
