Four Major Universities Select Unicon for Open Source Support of Sakai, uPortal, and CAS

Program Provides Scalable Levels of Technical Assistance and Discounts for Multiple Platforms

Phoenix, AZ  - June 30 2009 —Unicon, Inc., a leading provider of software consulting services and open source solutions for the education market, today announced that California State University, Sacramento, the University of Rhode Island, the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and Virginia Tech have joined Unicon's Cooperative Support Program for the open source Sakai, uPortal, or CAS (Central Authentication Service) platforms.  Unicon’s Cooperative Support Program provides member institutions with a predictable cost support structure for their open source solutions along with a dedicated team of expert development and technical specialists that deliver direct support and assistance.  The program includes scalable support options and discounts when multiple platforms are selected.  All development work and fixes performed by the team for individual institutions are contributed back and shared with the respective open source communities.  Unicon currently has over 30 colleges and universities enrolled in its Cooperative Support Program.

"Unicon's Cooperative Support Program is a 'must have' for our institution and we would not be running our open source solutions of Sakai and uPortal without having a commercial support provider,” said Duran Goodyear, Web Developer and Portal Administrator, University of the Arts.  “We know Unicon can handle any issues that might potentially arise."

"Having Unicon and its Cooperative Support Program were big reasons we felt comfortable deploying Sakai,” stated Trisha Gordon, Sakai Project Lead, University of Virginia.  “The program is great. It enables our institution to be actively involved in future enhancements for Sakai through our voting as a program member."

"We deployed uPortal as our campus-wide portal in 2007 and immediately saw strong value and benefits to joining Unicon's Cooperative Support Program," said Paul Gullette, Web Application Programmer, University of Louisiana at Monroe. "Having their team of uPortal experts available for any potential emergencies and routine technical assistance gave us an extra level of confidence to move forward with this open source solution."

Since 1993, Unicon’s consulting group has provided over 175 colleges and universities with software consulting, support, and related services for their online campus deployments.

About Unicon’s Cooperative Support Program for Sakai, uPortal, and CAS

Participation in the program requires an annual subscription fee that enables institutions to access the support services and also funds a dedicated support and development team. Support issues are managed on a priority basis with guaranteed service level agreements and an escalation mechanism top priority issues. Unicon has both Standard and Enterprise-level support options available and discounts are applied when institutions select multiple platforms to support.  All development work performed by the team will be done in direct participation with the open source Jasig, Sakai and uPortal communities.  The Cooperative Support Programs are a strong complement to Unicon’s other technology delivery services for Sakai, uPortal, and CAS which include various bundles comprised of project planning, software engineering, implementation, branding, and training components.

About Sakai

The Sakai software is a community source effort to develop a platform for innovation in collaboration, teaching and learning, and research support software.  The Sakai Project’s primary goal is to deliver the Sakai application framework and associated course management system (CMS) tools and components that are designed to work together. These components are for course development, delivery, management, and, as an augmentation of the original CMS model, they also support classroom and research collaboration. The software is being designed to be competitive with the best CMSs available. For more information visit: www.sakaiproject.org.

About Jasig

Jasig, Inc., is a non-profit (501(c)3), international consortium of educational institutions and commercial affiliates supporting open source software development and promoting open computing architectures for higher education. Jasig has been in operation for over eight years, holding regular conferences and sponsoring open source software applications like uPortal, the enterprise-level portal solution, and CAS, a flexible Central Authentication Service deployed for single sign-on. For more information, visit the Jasig website at http://www.jasig.org.