Edustructures Acquires SIF Technology from Sun Microsystems
Transaction demonstrates companies' commitment to the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) and open source reference implementation.
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Salt Lake City, UT (March 5, 2002) - Edustructures, the education industry's first independent
K-12 application integrator, announced today that Edustructures has acquired Sun SIF technology
with a commitment to keep the code in the open source community as an accessible reference
implementation. The software includes JaZ, a SIF zone integration server (ZIS) and J/SAL, a
Java class library that eases the migration effort from legacy applications to Java-based SIF
solutions.
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"Sun's Java-based JaZ is the first completed example of Java technology being applied to a SIF
Zone Integration Server," said Mark Silzer, senior manager of international sales at Sun. "We
feel strongly that broadened availability of a robust, independent, open source ZIS reference
implementation is key to the continued momentum of the SIF standard in education. Edustructures
is well positioned to lead in the K-12 integration space, and with their expertise and
application and operating system independence, they represent the perfect home for JaZ and
J/SAL."
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Edustructures co-founder Steve Curtis, a veteran educational software executive, agrees, "The
acquisition of JaZ and J/SAL is our way of saying to the community that we strongly support SIF
and we're committed to its success. Edustructures believes that every open standard needs a
strong, independent reference implementation for its community to use collaboratively.
Edustructures will rename the products, OpenSIF ZIS and OpenSIF Agent Classes, and will
continue to make them available as open source references for the SIF community."
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Application vendors developing SIF-compliant applications can use OpenSIF ZIS to demonstrate
their application in a sample environment. Schools coming up to speed with SIF-compliant
application integration can use OpenSIF ZIS to begin developing "proof-of-concept" implementations.
"OpenSIF ZIS is ideal for those application developers and school districts attempting to
validate SIF as a viable technology," adds Eric Petersen CTO and co-founder of Edustructures.
"It will represent a valuable compliment to Edustructures' forthcoming SIFWorks solution, an
enterprise-grade ZIS and application developer kit, also authored in Java."
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Ron Kleinman, Chief Vertical Evangelist at Sun Microsystems, adds, "This agreement with
Edustructures will both raise the value proposition for school districts considering adoption
of the SIF standard, while lowering the barrier to entry for those vendors with legacy K-12
applications. I am confident that OpenSIF ZIS will promote the vision of true interoperability
within the educational enterprise, which is after all what SIF is all about."
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Sun Microsystems in Education
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Sun is a leading provider of open network computing solutions to colleges and universities
around the world, powering academic, research and high performance computing systems, campus
administration, digital libraries and student instructions systems. In addition, Sun is committed
to connecting the world's students to the Internet, beginning with primary and secondary schools
and extending to all levels of higher education. For more information: www.sun.com/edu
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About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The ComputerTM" -- has propelled
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-
strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to
take their businesses to the nth. Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World
Wide Web at http://www.sun.com.
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About Edustructures
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Edustructures develops comprehensive application integration solutions built upon the Schools
Interoperability Framework (SIF) standard for K-12 school districts and state Departments of
Education. Edustructures is the first company solely dedicated to delivering a truly independent
enterprise application integration platform built on the SIF standard. Through its SIFWorks
technology platform and comprehensive professional services, Edustructures connects the systems
that power education.
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About the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF)
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The Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) is an initiative driven by K-12 education technology
providers and users to revolutionize the management and accessibility of data within schools and
school districts. SIF will enable diverse applications to interact and share data efficiently,
reliably and securely regardless of the platform hosting the applications. SIF has united over
one-hundred and twenty education technology providers in an unprecedented effort to give teachers
more time to do what they do best: teach. For further information, visit http://www.sifinfo.org.
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For more information, please contact:
Edustructures LLC
Sandra Richards, 1.877.790.1261 Extension 438
news@edustructures.com
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