Sun Microsystems joins hands with Aunwesha Knowledge Technologies to facilitate e-learning

Company Brief

New Delhi, September 27, 2007

Sun Microsystems India Pvt. Ltd today announced a technology alliance with Aunwesha Knowledge Technologies Pvt. Ltd, a software product development company operating in the IT segment of eLearning and knowledge management to deliver an end-to-end eLearning solution to the academic community.

Aunwesha Knowledge Technologies’ software suite, LearnITyÔ including its various components such as Learning Management System (LMS), Online Assessment System (OAS) have been certified on both Solaris 10 for x64 (Intel & AMD) systems, Sun UltraSparc architectures as well as on the Sun Java Enterprise System.

Sun Microsystems is one of the world's leading providers of e-learning infrastructure solutions for education. Sun, together with its partners, delivers a complete, open standards-based platform for e-learning. This platform includes a range of server systems for running e-learning applications such as content management systems, learning management systems, learning repositories and comprehensive security solutions.

For example, Sun’s Java Enterprise System offers the complete middleware stack needed for creating e-learning infrastructures, including identity management, security and application service provisioning. Sun is also active in organizations seeking to establish educational technology standards, such as IMS, SIF and SCORM.

LearnITyÔ - the software of Aunwesha is a pure "India Inc" brand that has been developed from scratch using open source and open standards. The product is the outcome of serious research and development that has been carried out for more than two years in the field of instructional design, learning theories, adaptive hypermedia, knowledge management and web based technologies. The product conforms to all major international standards such as IEEE LTSA, ADL SCORM and IMS QTI.

In order to make LearnITy more accessible, Aunwesha has drawn a very simple flexible Licensing Policy, which ensures low cost of ownership for the end customers.

According to Andrew Lim, Regional Director , APAC - Government,

Education & Healthcare (GEH), Sun Microsystems, “We are very happy to partner with Aunwesha Knowledge Technologies, a pioneer in eLearning enterprise applications to deliver a next generation eLearning solution to the academic community in India. Sun is committed to connecting the world's students to the Internet and we believe a sharing approach creates global, participative communities for both educators and students alike. Our strategy for eLearning consists of three critical components- open content, open source and open standards, which we believe will help us create next-generation learning environments for the education community.”

According to Sourav Chakraborty, Executive Director, Aunwesha Knowledge Technologies “For eLearning to develop into a sophisticated and futuristic learning platform, an essential prerequisite is to remove barriers to learning and the presence of open standards, both of which lower costs to education while expanding opportunities. In Sun, we found a perfect fit since Sun is one of the strongest proponents of open source and open standards. Further, we were also very impressed with the infrastructure setup and the high level of technical competence shown by the Sun Competence Centre team members while porting and testing our eLearning engine "LearnITyä" on the Sun platform. LearnITy is an advanced e-learning solution that provides seamless integration between the diverse components of e-learning and knowledge management and a high end application such as this was greatly enhanced with the use of Sun technology.”

“Aunwesha pursues enterprise-wide eLearning implementations. With this collaboration, we would together with Sun address the Education and Research segment, which holds a lot of opportunity in an emerging market like India” he further added.

Besides Intranet, Intranet and VSAT deployment, LearnITyÔ has been successfully tested at the Space Application Centre, ISRO as part of the EDUSAT Project. LearnITy has also been successfully implemented on Sun infrastructure at Central Institute of English as a Foreign Language (CIEFL) , Hydrabad; RKS Learning Systems(RKS), Delhi; National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research (NITTTR), Kolkatta.

For more information, please contact:

Bipasha Chakrabarti

PR and Communications Manager

Sun Microsystems India Pvt. Ltd.

Ph: 080- 66930600 ext 89659

Email: bipasha.chakrabarti@sun.com