Elluminate and Unicon, have announced they will collaborate to deliver a joint product and service offering for the Sakai Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE) for academic institutions at the K-12, community college and higher education levels.

The Sakai Project is a community-source effort to develop a platform for teaching, learning, collaboration and research that began in 2004 as a collaborative effort between Berkley, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford and the University of Michigan. An alternative to proprietary or homegrown course management solutions, Sakai combines an application framework with a wide variety of associated CMS tools and components that are designed to work together.

The joint offering from Elluminate and Unicon will provide customers with services ranging from a hosted test environment to a complete end-user implementation. Currently available, Academus® Open Campus is an Application Service Provider (ASP) website hosted by Unicon that offers a no-cost Sakai test drive as well as an affordable pilot environment for Sakai projects. Elluminate Live! Lite Office is included in the offering, providing a single-room, personal-sized virtual classroom with whiteboard, two-way audio, text messaging, and participant information modules.

"For customers looking to experiment with an open-source LMS, Sakai is the obvious choice for the higher education market," said Jim Layne, Unicon's vice president of marketing and sales. "By collaborating with industry leaders like Elluminate and other complementary product and service providers, we can offer a complete, affordable solution for cost-conscious, resource-strained organizations for their online campuses and communities."

"We are extremely pleased to partner with Unicon to provide a collaborative framework that supports technology adoption and best practices in the education community," said Maurice Heiblum, president of Elluminate USA, Inc. "Elluminate Live! offers an educational technology not available in the Sakai CLE, that ensures participants are fully engaged in learning, communicating and collaborating in real time regardless of computer platform or Internet connection speed."