rSmart Launches rSmart Sakai CLE; rSmart Follows Trail Blazed by Red Hat

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 31, 2006--rSmart, the prime source of commercial open source applications for education, announced the availability of the first and only commercial distribution of Sakai, rSmart Sakai CLE, today at the 5th Sakai Conference taking place in Vancouver, British Columbia. The rSmart Sakai CLE enables educational institutions to realize the benefits of open source innovation by offering the comprehensive support and services required when implementing enterprise software on campus.

In much the same way that Red Hat offers its Red Hat Enterprise Linux solution while contributing to the Linux community, rSmart offers its rSmart Sakai CLE as a fully supported version of Sakai.

"This release of rSmart Sakai CLE is a defining milestone in the evolution of Sakai as the future of collaborative learning," said Ray Barker, Chief Executive Officer at rSmart. "The rSmart Sakai CLE marks a significant advance of Sakai in the education enterprise. This application has the performance -and most importantly the dedicated commercial support- needed to make Sakai the sensible choice for every institution, from the smallest private colleges to the largest public universities. Like Red Hat Enterprise Linux this supported delivery of innovation at a reasonable price creates unprecedented value for our customers."

The rSmart Sakai CLE offers a new choice to all educational institutions at a time when the ongoing consolidation of a few highly proprietary vendors have left the market with few alternatives. The open source model spreads the cost of software development across the community -eliminating the need for one time license fees -and allows rSmart to focus on providing high quality software and support at a fraction of the cost of proprietary vendors.

rSmart has made a concerted effort to improve, enhance and refine the user experience. Key aspects of the rSmart Sakai CLE include:

-- A rationale for distinctions between site types, user types, roles, permissions, system access, tool presentation, categorization and display (i.e. who sees what, when and why in the interface)

-- Updated and revised documentation includes role-related support cues on the screen

-- A new Gateway page and an interface that's visually appealing

"I would categorize these changes as technical, functional and aesthetic. We've taken the time to figure out how this collection, which now numbers over 33 distinct tools, should work together, to test it and to package it in a way that's flexible enough to support a wide variety of different user populations," said Hannah Reeves Senior Educational Consultant for rSmart.

The rSmart Sakai CLE is now available. For more information please visit www.rsmart.com.

About The rSmart Group

The rSmart Group is the leading open source application software company serving the higher education market. rSmart packages, certifies, deploys, and supports a suite of enterprise financial and collaborative learning applications for colleges and universities. As an active member of open source projects like OSPI, Kuali, and Sakai, rSmart is able to provide its clients with software applications specifically designed to meet the unique needs of institutions of higher education. This collaborative approach allows rSmart to offer colleges and universities open source applications that break their dependence on traditional proprietary software vendors.

Please visit www.rsmart.com for more information.

About Sakai

The Sakai Project, a landmark venture to create open-source course management, collaboration and online research support tools for the higher education community, involves more than 100 universities, colleges and institutions of learning around the world. The project, begun through with a collaboration involving the University of Michigan, Indiana University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the Open Knowledge Initiative and the uPortal Project, and funded by the Mellon and Hewlett Foundations.