rSmart Adds Support for Open Source Kuali Financial System

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 11/30/09

rSmart, which develops open source applications for the education sector, has launched a new professional services offering to support the Kuali Financial System (KFS). KFS was launched earlier this year by the Kuali Foundation, with new deployments at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins; the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA; and San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, CA. The latter two institutions are also the first two customers for the new service offering.

The financial system is a conversion of the Indiana University's Financial Information System to the web with enhancements identified by community development partners. Kuali Financial System is available under the Open Source Initiative Educational Community License and can be adopted by colleges and universities without licensing fees.

"The Kuali Financial System has proven to be an outstanding fit for our institution. As a community college, we have unique needs that are not well addressed by off-the-shelf financial packages from the big vendors," said Matt Coombs, director, systems development at San Joaquin Delta College. "As you would expect with any robust enterprise system, Kuali Finance System requires a team effort to implement and run. We would have not been able to implement, or more importantly, support and maintain KFS over the long term without rSmart's help."

Modeled after rSmart's support and maintenance offerings for Sakai, another community-developed enterprise application, the financial system service provides a subscription that covers technical support, troubleshooting, issue resolution, scheduled updates, patches, and access to documentation and tools. For additional fees, institutions can contract for premium case management, advanced customization and configuration, managed IT services, and hosting.

The company said it expects to introduce additional support offerings for other Kuali Foundation products, including its student system and research administration application.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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