The Primer will enable developers of educational applications and digital content to further understand how adoption of interoperability standards can advance both education goals as well as their own business needs. The Primer also provides education leaders with the information needed to embrace interoperability and encourage further standards development. Appendices describe organizations and initiatives that create and promote standards, and define relevant concepts and terms.

“Interoperability enables innovation and improves products and services for consumers and vendors alike,” stated the Co-Chairs of the SIIA Education Division’s Technical & Development Committee, Steve Nordmark (Chief Academic Officer, Knovation), Michael Jay (President, Educational Systemics) and Robert Iskander (Founder, Chairman & CEO, EduTone Corporation). They added: “We call on both technology developers and education leaders to move forward now to implement interoperability standards to ensure technology use continues to mature, grow, and better serve the needs of educators, students, and the public at large.”

The importance of interoperability is highlighted in the pending initiative to develop online assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards, funded with federal Race to the Top grants to the SBAC and PARCC state consortia. SIIA and others have argued for a flexible, modular assessment technology architecture to meet evolving and unique state and local requirements. Such a design requires interoperability standards to enable the seamless migration of test items and student data across applications, as well as the integration of various component technologies.

“SIIA is a strong advocate for interoperability standards,” stated Mark Schneiderman, SIIA’s senior director of education policy. “This Primer is intended to support those making high-level decisions about when to implement, or require compliance with, interoperability standards by providing education and technology leaders with a broad understanding of the relative maturity of standards, the trade-offs involved with using them, and their short-term and long-term impact.”

The Primer was developed under the direction of the SIIA Education Division’s Technical & Development Committee. It was authored by Edward Walker, Executive Vice President, Consulting Services for Education, Inc. The Primer was released to SIIA members in February 2012 and is now publicly available for free at http://www.siia.net/estore/. SIIA grants all parties permission to reproduce and distribute the Primer in print or digital format for non-commercial purposes provided the copyright is attributed to SIIA.

About SIIA 
The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry. SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education, and intellectual property protection to more than 500 leading software and information companies. The SIIA Education Division serves and represents more than 180 member companies that provide software, digital content and other technologies that address educational needs. The Division shapes and supports the industry by providing leadership, advocacy, business development opportunities and critical market information. For more information, visit www.siia.net/education.

The history of process improvement is the story of invention and innovation, which also makes it the history of technology. The car was an invention that changed travel, but the assembly line was an innovation that forever transformed manufacturing. Education has similarly undergone many innovative changes, from the blackboard to multimedia in the classroom, and from typewriters and paper to productivity applications and database systems in the office. In each instance, technological innovation has facilitated improvements that increased productivity.

Of course, technology investments are often made for reasons not well defined, yet there really are only two legitimate reasons to invest in technology: to improve efficiency and to make more things possible — which are really just two aspects of the same function. So, while budget cuts usually reach into an organization’s technology programs, the practice is most often detrimental and counterproductive. Forward thinking organizations have come to accept this reality, and as a result now view their technological investment as a strategic asset that can be leveraged in order to achieve process improvements and the associated goal of increased efficiency.

For the last couple decades, this has meant a build-out of network infrastructures, harnessing the World Wide Web, data-warehousing, wireless, handheld devices, and ever-increasing demand for ubiquitous services, complete with all the complexities of implementation, training, maintenance and more. Not only have these efforts often left technology departments stressed with issues regarding maintenance, use and obsolescence, but the inability to effectively meet demand has left a trail of failed implementations that feeds an erroneous criticism of the efficacy of technology. Fortunately, as is typically the case, these issues have led to yet another round of innovative solutions.

The current path of innovation was paved with the advent of reliable virtualization technology, capable of leveraging high capacity storage and massive multi-thread computing power. Virtualization has revolutionized the capabilities of organizations with the technical capacity to manage such technology, but even more importantly, it has enabled the next wave of technological innovation — cloud computing.

In the cloud, organizations have access to a menu of services that’s customizable to form a tailored fit for their specific needs. Options are available to contract for software, platform or infrastructure as a service (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS). This provides a degree of flexibility previously unavailable and offers agility, reliability, scalability and performance to organizations of all sizes. Both end users and entire organizations are empowered through the advent of cloud technologies, and as might have been expected, innovation has created a new set of issues but also once again opened a door to even more robust solutions.

Taken alone, the cloud already delivers on much of its promise, but in order to gain its full benefit, it must be effectively integrated with more traditional models for technology services. In effect, services in the public cloud must not only integrate with other public cloud services but must also work seamlessly with private clouds to provide a transparent end-to-end solution. This reality has led Gartner to predict that “The future of cloud computing will be permeated with the notion of brokers negotiating relationships between providers of cloud services and the service customers.”

Brokering of cloud services is not only the latest wave of innovation to squeeze still more benefit from the cloud, it’s also the gateway to the next generation solution — the community cloud. By utilizing all of the benefits of the hybrid public/private cloud and also leveraging the economies of scale inherent in a given sector, vertical or other group, the community cloud is able to further empower end-users and technology departments while simultaneously providing tighter integration of services and still reducing costs.

The community cloud wraps the public and private clouds together into a community-specific hybrid that promotes further sharing of resources that’s beneficial to all parties concerned. Shared resources can include infrastructure, or possibly just collective purchasing power and improved ease of access, but regardless of the specifics, collaboration and alignment of interests work together to improve efficiencies for all participants while sharing the costs, reducing risk and enhancing overall success.

In the private sector, the most difficult hurdle to community-based cloud adoption is the identification of participants with sufficient alignment of interests and benefits to be gained through collaboration. Fortunately, this is not the case in the public sector. Most public agencies already acknowledge the benefit of collaboration, and nowhere is this more the case than in public education. By its very definition, public education consists of a network of organizations formed into a hierarchical structure of mutual dependency and shared interest. Taken together, this community, complete with its many providers of technology services, represents an ecosystem that’s rife with opportunity to take full advantage of the many benefits the cloud has to offer.

A K-12 ecosystem tied together in a community cloud is capable of gaining much from the basic aspects of community, such as improved communication and collaboration. It can also profit from collective licensing arrangements and other economies of scale. All of the normal benefits of the cloud, including reduced costs, lowered barrier to entry due to the elimination of capital outlays, fewer IT skill requirements, as well as all of the facets of improved performance are still present. But these advantages just scrape the surface of the potential benefit stemming from the federation of resources and services.

The federation of learning resources swings the door open to unprecedented levels of access and collaboration. The needs of all stakeholders are served through an integrated infrastructure that connects varied content stores while ensuring interoperability, and does so through the same familiar interface that takes advantage of the many other features of the community.

Federated services are an even more powerful aspect of the cloud-based K-12 ecosystem. The fully implemented community cloud will not only integrate services and provide the many benefits of integration, including Single Sign-On (SSO) and automated role-based provisioning, but it will enable these features to be deployed in a hierarchical manner.

Hierarchical provisioning allows top or intermediate level entities within a given ecosystem to procure specific services on behalf of all members of the community. These services are then made available to subordinate organizations, or perhaps even individuals, through a top-down distribution model. The entire process is streamlined by providing access, but the concerns often voiced at the local level surrounding security and control are mitigated by retaining acceptance and implementation of the service within the subordinate agency.

This framework enables the top agency, perhaps a state, to serve collective needs and act as a secure identity broker. They can improve efficiencies, by coordinating SSO and other services across the entire community, while leaving local security issues, such as access to an organization’s directory services, to the individual organization. At the same time, the parent organization does not overwhelm its labor resources, avoiding such capacity issues by delegating administration throughout the hierarchy.

If this all sounds a little like having your cake and eating it too, it’s because that’s essentially the result. The implementation of community clouds in public education allows the best of both worlds, the large community and the local organization, to effectively interoperate. If, as Seymour Papert, the father of educational technology once suggested, technology use in education is analogous to strapping a jet engine to a stagecoach, then virtualization and community clouds are the means to effectively couple said technology and realize the full promise it has to offer.

Of course, an integrated K-12 ecosystem requires enabling technology that can create an environment conducive to extracting all of the myriad benefits available. The technology must provide for the delivery and deployment of pre-integrated services wrapped into a consistent provisioning, billing, security, administration and support framework.

In the world of K-12 technology, there’s only one provider dedicated to this effort, and that’s EduTone. With nearly 2 million learning resources and a catalog of 190 education-specific connectors and growing, the Global Grid for Learning is a solution tailored for public education that promises to unlock the collaborative power of cloud computing and fully enable the K-12 ecosystem.

These are just a few of the issues to be analyzed and addressed through the lens of user lifecycle management, and as obvious as it is that all organizations must face similar issues, it’s equally evident that most have not performed the analysis. Do you know how much money your organization spends to manage its technology user lifecycle? How does the cost compare to the benefit?

It’s more than a little odd in this day and age of institutional reliance on technology, that so many organizations still rely on predominantly manual systems for “onboarding” and “offboarding” of new employees. In the educational sector, where students often outnumber all other users by an order of magnitude and often require provisioning of the entire population more than once per school year, the reliance on manual systems is even more alarming.

A typical manual process for the employee lifecycle might consist of an email, perhaps one that includes necessary forms, sent from Human Resources to a hiring manager, that is then completed in hardcopy and forwarded to Technology Services where work tickets are created and assigned to the appropriate administrators of the agency’s many and varied systems. Similar processes may or may not exist for transfers, promotions, or termination, with each introducing its own inefficiencies and risks.

In an instructional setting, the problems are not only amplified due to sheer volume, but can often render an otherwise effective process completely useless. Consider the case where a teacher not only relies on course-based resources for student access but also uses an assessment application to track student performance. When a new student is transferred into this class, not only do manual process delays deny the student access to critical course resources, they also prevent the teacher from including the new student in the assessment regime.

Needless to say, not only is this type of system complex, time consuming and costly, but it’s also fraught with potential problems. Inefficiencies can easily lead to the scenarios mentioned above, those where access or revocation of access lags the need, but manual systems also result in errors that further complicate the process, often leading to security and compliance issues in addition to the loss of productivity.

Fortunately, all of these issues can be easily addressed through dynamic management of the user lifecycle process. Dynamic identity and access management (IAM) begins with automated provisioning, includes a robust single sign-on capacity (SSO), and can be further optimized through identity federation and authoritative source triggering.

The core of an effective IAM solution is user provisioning. The provisioning system must tightly integrate with lifecycle workflows to ensure that both security and access requirements are met in a timely manner. Automated account creation greatly reduces the burden on IT staff while simultaneously ensuring that users have immediate access to needed resources. Standardized access profiles and automated account termination work together to enhance security by ensuring that access control is not only timely but also accurate. And the use of an IAM solution provides the additional benefit of centralizing all records of user account transactions, which can be invaluable as an audit trail.

User provisioning delivers its benefits through the use of role mapping. The definition of IAM roles is typically based first on the different functional roles within an organization. In an educational setting, the most broad categorization is typically: student, teacher, parent, staff, with further subdivisions depending on grade level, department, work site, job title, course and other criteria deemed pertinent by the organization.

Once roles are defined, they can be mapped to the many systems and applications used throughout the organization. Mappings are routinely created for the network directory and email system, and depending on the scope of the IAM implementation, normally include all major systems (e.g. HR, finance, SIS, assessment, etc.), as well as resources for learning, reference, and other varied services. Customization of roles and their related service mappings can vary widely to meet the specific needs of the organization and are typically limited only by the capabilities of the chosen provisioning solution.

Selecting a provisioning system is no menial chore. An effective solution should function over a wide range of devices and operating systems, operate without needing an “agent” to be installed, and must integrate tightly with other IAM functions, such as SSO. The system should provide out-of-box functionality coupled with the capacity for expansion and further automation. It must include a user-friendly interface and adequate reporting. It must be robust, reliable and reasonably priced, and it’s absolutely essential that it allow flexible definition of roles and provide complex matrix capabilities to map them to the entire suite of applications.

There are a number of provisioning solutions that meet these criteria, but there’s only one that does so with a central focus on K-12 education. Providing all of the functionality necessary for a successful provisioning solution, the EduTone Xchange is designed from the ground up to meet the needs of the educational sector. It achieves the expected ROI and delivers on the promise of increased productivity, improved security, and lower support costs by providing an industry leading multi-tenant IAM system coupled with a best-in-class offering of application connectors for educational entities.  In the final analysis, an IAM solution is only as good as its capability to integrate with an organization’s systems and applications, and in K-12 education, no product does that better than the EduTone Xchange.

Assuming that your organization does rely on computers to carry out its daily activities, the first critical question is “does your organization use multiple applications that require user logon?” The second is an extension of the first: “whether or not the applications being used are web-based?” If the answer to either question is “No,” then Single Sign-On (SSO) is not for you, but if these conditions apply, then your organization will benefit from SSO.

The real question is then not one of “need,” but becomes one of cost and benefit. And fortunately for most organizations, what used to be the domain of only the largest and most technologically advanced, is now feasible for organizations of all sizes and types. The cost of SSO implementation is increasingly more affordable, and the available solutions are much less complex. This leaves potential SSO customers free to evaluate benefits without excessive concern for cost.

Being a technology that provides users the ability to logon to multiple applications by providing a single user name and password, SSO provides immediate benefit to the end-user in terms of an improved user experience. But as important as this may be, it’s really just the first layer of benefit provided through SSO implementation.

Consider what the ramifications of users only needing to remember and enter a single password might be. They would obviously be less likely to forget or write down their password, more inclined to use stronger passwords, and have lower incidence of login difficulties. These improvements combine to provide organizational benefit in the form of increased productivity, enhanced security and reduced support costs.

Increased Productivity
A productive workforce is the result of both efficient operations and high utilization of labor resources. Neither of these objectives are achieved when users are forced to continually enter and reenter logon IDs and passwords. This repetition often leads to password fatigue, which can cause high levels of stress and a corresponding decrease in efficiency. It also reduces utilization by introducing redundancy of effort and increasing the potential for idle time.

While these effects might seem trivial at first blush, their impact can be significant when considered across an entire organization over an extended period of time. Redundant entry of logon credentials can easily consume a minute or two per employee per day, even in the absence of logon problems. Over the course of a year, this equates to more than one lost day per employee. Lost time for a workforce of as few as 250 people would be sufficient to account for an additional full-time-equivalent, and this is pretty much a best-case analysis.

Potential gains are far greater when the estimated average 20 minutes of productivity loss per incident caused by actual password problems is included. Consider this in an educational setting, where such problems result in lost instructional time, or worse yet, in a lab environment where the impact is amplified as teachers struggle to assist multiple students. The productivity gains alone can often justify an SSO implementation.

Enhanced Security
Elimination of password fatigue alone can greatly improve security efforts. Users who are forced to memorize multiple passwords often dismiss and avoid approved security practices to the extent possible. This might be achieved by resisting the use of strong passwords, using simple patterns which expose a group of passwords should one be determined, or any one of a number of such behaviors that expand the possibilities for cracking. Users might instead just write their passwords down, committing a security breach of the first order.

But end-user practices of this nature are not the only security issues addressed through SSO. Sometimes users also need to be protected from behaviors that aren’t deliberate. Creating an environment where logon only happens once, and does so with a familiar interface, can significantly reduce the possibility of phishing success. SSO also enables technology staff to implement and enforce uniform authentication/authorization policies across the organization, and with the use of federated authentication, ensures secure access to external resources.

Reduced Support Costs
Once the implementation of an SSO solution is complete, the volume of helpdesk calls stemming from logon and password issues drops dramatically. Estimates for password-related helpdesk calls run as high a 85% of overall volume. According to the Gartner Group, the number is between 20% and 50%, with one recent report identifying calls for password resets and account lockouts to amount to 30% of the total. Forrester Research concurs, setting the range at 25% to 40% in one study and 20% to 50% in another.

As with other areas of consideration, organization size and complexity will dictate the overall savings that might be expected from such call reductions. But using the META Group’s 1.75 average calls per end-user per month, along with Gartner’s conservative estimate of 30% for password-related incidents, an effective SSO solution could potentially eliminate 6.3 calls/user annually. At an average of 15 minutes per password-related incident (META Group), a helpdesk staffed with technicians paid the average $41,000 would save more than $31/end-user per year on salary alone.

So, does your organization need Single Sign-On? The answer is very likely a resounding “Yes!” Can your organization afford Single Sign-On? Once all of the advantages are considered, the prospect is much more probable than it might otherwise seem. But one thing is certain: if your organization has any interest in increased productivity, enhanced security, or reduction of support costs, a serious evaluation of Single Sign-On solutions is absolutely essential, and for those in the education sector, there’s no better place to start than the EduTone Xchange.

The ETX-Mobile Edition will also offer each school, or school district, a library of 200+ on-demand EduTone Connectors that enables the school administrators to configure each device, based on the role of its owner, to automatically access all of the school licensed content and software services through a single sign-on Passport. The EduTone Connector catalog is the most extensive educational ecosystem on the market today and includes most of the premise-based school-centric enterprise applications such as their Active Directory™ LDAP, Moodle™ LMS, Microsoft’s SharePoint™ Portal, various Student Information Systems, Learning Management Systems, and Library Information Systems, in addition to cloud-hosted school-centric applications such Google Apps for Education™, Microsoft Live.Edu™, the Global Grid for Learning™, and many more.

“The ruggedized Intel classmate PC -based ET Persona devices powered by the ETX-Mobile Edition and featuring Intel’s robust educational tools are game changers for educational organizations that are ready to personalize their education delivery model” said Robert Iskander, CEO of EduTone. “We are truly excited to leverage Intel’s proven technology, tools and market leadership in providing solutions that will improve student learning outcomes around the world”, he continued. “We are very excited to have EduTone as a partner adopting Intel® Learning Series solutions” said Dr. Wayne Grant, Director of Research and Planning for the Education Market Platforms Group at Intel Corporation.. “EduTone’s award-winning Xchange Platform will accelerate the adoption of the Intel Learning Series family of products and will enable educators provide a direct path to 21st century learning”.

Intel® Learning Series brings together a strong ecosystem of PC manufacturers, operating system vendors, education service providers, content and software providers to deliver a complete, end-to-end education solution. It offers marketing tools, training, online exposure and a forum for its members to share resources and find common opportunities. More than 500 members in 70 countries are developing applications, peripherals and services optimized for the Learning Series. For more information, visit www.intellearningseries.com.

About EduTone Corporation

EduTone provides the sustainable technology schools need in order to deliver the 21st century teaching and learning environments their stakeholders require. Installed in thousands of schools around the world, the EduTone XchangeTM is a 2011 CODiE “Best K-12 Solution” award winning, Web 3.0 Platform-as-a-Service technology that enables on-demand, one-to-one services delivery in the Education Enterprise. EduTone is a DBA of VIP Tone Inc., a privately held corporation headquartered in Alameda, California. For more information, visit www.EduTone.com.

PR Contact:
Yanni Kalajakis
+1 866 901-8663 x9019
yanni@edutone.com

Alameda, CA – Dec. 29th, 2011

The prestigious acknowledgement is given annually to K to12 education services and products that support educational innovation in and out of the classroom. The winners were selected by the editors of District Administration magazine from hundreds of nominations submitted by their subscribers, including school superintendents and district-level directors in districts across the United States. Winning products were determined by the quantity of nominations received per product, as well as an evaluation of product quality based upon readers’ nominations and explanations. “We are honored to be recognized by our school customers and end-users,” said Robert Iskander, CEO of EduTone, “This is the second major recognition of the EduTone Xchange this year, following the three CODiE Awards we won in May.”

About EduTone: EduTone provides schools with the sustainable technology infrastructure necessary to create the teaching and learning environments parents and students require. Installed in thousands of schools around the world, the EduTone Xchange™ is a 2011 CODiE “Best K-12 Education Solution” award-winning, Web 3.0 Platform-as-a-Service technology that enables on-demand; one-to-one services delivery in the Education Enterprise.

EduTone is a DBA of VIP Tone Inc., a privately held corporation headquartered in Alameda, California. For more information, go to: http://www.EduTone.com.

About District Administration: District Administration is a monthly publication covering all of the important topics faced in today’s K12 school systems. With a circulation of more than 73,000, District Administration reaches top decision-makers in virtually every school district across the country.
Subscribers are district-level leaders in K12 education, including superintendents, assistant superintendents, curriculum directors, business officers, IT directors and federal funds administrators. For more information visithttp://www.districtadministration.com.

Press Contact:
Yanni Kalajsakis
EduTone
866-901-8663
Yanni@viptone.com

“This partnership expands our sales and support resources in the state of California,” said Robert Iskander, CEO of EduTone. “GigaKOM’s phenomenal track record and 100% focus on K-12 education was the deciding factor in their selection as our strategic partner that will directly serve and support all of our existing customers in California.  We will continue to innovate the capabilities of our cloud-based EduTone Xchange(TM) award-winning Platform but will rely on our partners to implement it for our clients.”

“The synergies between EduTone and GigaKOM are compelling,” said Andrej Komatina, Founder & CEO of GigaKOM. “This will immediately expand our existing technical resources and clients in Northern California, and will enhance our K-12 education solution portfolio with EduTone’s products. We are very excited about this strategic acquisition and partnership!”

GigaKOM will immediately serve all of EduTone’s existing accounts in Northern California and will transition all of the EduTone Systems Integration resources to be part of its expanding sales and technical support team. Under this Agreement, the two companies will jointly pursue new opportunities in the California K-12 education market.

 About EduTone: EduTone provides schools with the sustainable technology infrastructure necessary to create the teaching and learning environments parents and students require. Installed in thousands of schools around the world, the EduTone Xchange™ is a 2011 CODiE “Best K-12 Education Solution” award-winning, Web 3.0 Platform-as-a-Service technology that enables on-demand; one-to-one services delivery in the Education Enterprise.

EduTone is a DBA of VIP Tone Inc., a privately held corporation headquartered in Alameda, California. For more information, go to: http://www.EduTone.com.

About GigaKOM:  GigaKOM is a full service technology solutions provider. Its vision is to improve the stability of each and every network it service. GigaKOM has partnered with the industry’s best network and system manufacturers to provide its customers with cost effective, superior products and services. GigaKOM has created solutions ranging from desktops to complete networks that ensure access to the vast array of services that are available to improve business efficiency.

GigaKOM Inc., a privately held corporation headquartered in San Diego, California.  For more information, go to: http://www.GigaKOM.com.

Press Contacts:

Yanni Kalajsakis
EduTone
866-901-8663
Yanni@viptone.com 

Keith Harrison
GigaKOM
858-769-5412
KeithHarrison@gigakom.com

Let’s take the technological changes as an example. We see a combination of three major trends—cloud computing, social media, and mobility—converging any organization’s IT infrastructure into a more affordable and democratic one, transforming the way most Small to Mid-Size Enterprises (SMEs) invest in their corporate automation and communications tools.

Many IT companies now talk about the “consumerization of the enterprise,” which simply means that the employees and customers, who are consumers of gadgets and tools, are now running the show and bringing their own mobile devices to work, where they also use their personalized software services, such as professional social media, email, and IP telephony. They are demanding their employers let them choose which devices to purchase for their day-to-day usage and, what’s more, to be able to access their corporate resources through these devices.

Most corporate CIOs have recently decided to give up on dictating which access devices or ISPs to mandate for corporate IT. Instead, they now offer a secure mobile portal allowing their staff to BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to work. This adds a different kind of burden on the IT support staff, forcing them to support multiple operating systems and to ensure that corporate security is not jeopardized in any way.

Additionally, as these SMEs start using more affordable cloud-based software applications, such as Google Apps and Salesforce.com, they become more open minded about open platform policies because their SaaS vendors are investing in porting, testing, and supporting their own products, making sure they run well on any access device. This shift in corporate IT strategy and culture is irreversible. And it is now impacting education, as IT directors in schools and districts follow these trends and learn from their peers in other industries.

In addition to embracing this new technological trend, schools also feel pressured to do more with less, sometimes being forced to cut their budgets by as much as 25%. For schools, it represents a choice between continuing to conduct their operations as usual without changing their habits, increasing class sizes, laying off teachers and closing down school sites, or innovating by leveraging technology to increase organizational efficiencies to do more with less.

Teachers are also being asked to do a lot more with a lot less: embrace new curriculum standards, capture student performance data, individualize instruction, support larger class sizes, and even accept a cut in pay.

Traditional K-12 public schools are starting to disintegrate and be replaced by more innovative charter schools, virtual schools, and even flex academies. There are now many different choices for parents to choose from for their kids, and they are all still considered public education.

So what gives? Is there an end in sight? Should we just give up on the traditional public school system and let it disintegrate? Is this a good thing for our nation and for our kids? The answer is absolutely NO. Traditional schools are starting to think “outside the box” and are starting to innovate in many ways by reaching out to their biggest allies—the parents.

Parents play a significant role in supporting our schools. Studies show a direct correlation between student performance and parent involvement and also between school quality and Parent Teacher Association (PTA) activities. When parents step up and volunteer to support the schools through various means, including financial support and fund-raising, the schools are then able to make up for their shortfall in government funding. Smart schools are starting to invest in professional expertise and services that would harness the power of the parents in their community.

Students, teachers, and parents are considered “consumers” within the school “enterprise.” As the shift in spending on school-centric resources starts falling on the parents’ shoulders, it is expected that the parents (i.e., consumers) will start to choose (or dictate), rather than the school staff, which products, brands, and suppliers are most suitable for the schools. In some cases, the schools will make a “wish list” of supplies needed and expect the parents to buy these supplies (from specific suppliers) and donate them to the schools or teachers.

Some argue that the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) model in education is more efficient—and more lucrative to pursue—compared with the traditional Business-to-Enterprise (B2E) model. Obviously this model is only possible for a limited set of “consumable” products and services that could be easily procured by parents. Supplemental textbooks are easily replaced by online digital media; personal computers by netbooks, tablets, and smartphones; productivity software by free web-based tools; and after-school on-site tutoring programs by online tutoring.

All of these products and services could be easily “consumerized,” and schools could start allowing parents to co-fund the students’ access devices or allow a BYOD model. Vendors and suppliers are starting to offer academic discounts on their products and services directly to parents and redirect their marketing programs to target consumers. Apple shifted their education strategy 100% toward a consumer model five years ago, and look at them now. They have doubled or tripled their market share in education since then.

So is this “consumerization of the school enterprise” a good thing for our schools? Should parents continue to fund schools? Should schools continue to allow parents to make buying decisions? Should we all give up on the B2E model in education? Only time will tell. However, I personally believe that the school holds a lot of weight in influencing consumer behavior and buying patterns within any community. So if a school recommends a certain digital content provider or a certain type of access device, or if the school leverages its buying power to negotiate a school-centric volume discount that the parents could take advantage of, then the parents will follow the school’s advice. Also if the school asks the parents to purchase its consumer products from a certain school-affinity program that benefits the schools, then not just the parents but also the whole community at large will follow the school’s plea and call to action and will buy products through such a program.

Schools hold a lot of weight, and the school brand is still a very valuable brand. So it is not all single-sided influence, but rather the education enterprise influences consumer behavior while the consumers co-fund the education enterprise.

In summary, schools and consumers are both joined at the hip. As school budgets continue to shrink, schools will increasingly reach out to parents to fund new categories of essential school resources, including mobile access devices, digital media, and online test preparation and tutoring services.

About Robert Iskander

Father of four children, ranging from 2 to 22 years old, Robert Iskander is a very passionate technology visionary. He founded VIP Tone in April 2000 to realize his vision of “connecting all the dots” in K-12 education and delivering an “on-demand” web services infrastructure for schools all over the world. Prior to VIP Tone, Robert spent 13 years at Sun Microsystems, where he held various leadership roles in sales and market development. He started the Middle East operations for Sun Microsystems in 1992 and led the organization for four years, then moved back to the U.S. to direct the worldwide market development for the education vertical market. Mr. Iskander has a total of 25 years of experience in the technology industry.

Mr. Iskander holds degrees with honors in biomedical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).  He can be reached at robert@VIPTONE.com.

EduTone will integrate K12complete’s online School Storefronts with its award-winning EduTone Xchange™ Platform. The consolidated solutions will enable EduTone’s customers to streamline online payment processing and fund raising activities and to offer a broad range of school-related products and services to local communities.

The acquisition of K12complete is the second acquisition for EduTone in 2011. In July, EduTone acquired Global Grid for Learning, Ltd. from Cambridge University Press to become EduTone’s digital content marketplace for education. EduTone also recently launched the ET Persona, an affordable school-centric tablet that has been received with rave customer reviews. These acquisitions and the ET Persona product line demonstrate EduTone’s continued commitment to be the preferred ecosystem integration platform for schools and education service providers worldwide.

“Both public and private schools today are grossly underfunded,” said Robert Iskander, CEO of EduTone. “As the role of technology infrastructure in schools comes to the forefront, we are pleased to be able to provide our partners and customers with robust and cost effective solutions. Combining K12complete’s online storefronts with EduTone’s secure cloud computing services and affordable mobile devices, such as the ET Persona, will help schools become more efficient, enhance their technology infrastructure and address current budgetary shortfalls.”

“The synergies between EduTone and K12complete are compelling,” said Adam Thorpe, Co-Founder of K12complete. “This acquisition will facilitate a rapid rollout of K12complete’s payment processing and e-Commerce platform and will drive EdPay to be the market leader in electronic payment, e-Commerce and fundraising solutions for schools. K12complete is excited to be joining forces with such a great organization and an energetic team.”

Notes to Editors:

To request interviews, or for further information, please contact:

EduTone: Yanni Kalajakis | yanni@edutone.com | +1 866 901-8663 x9019

About EduTone: EduTone provides schools with the sustainable technology infrastructure necessary to create the teaching and learning environments parents and students require. Installed in thousands of schools around the world, the EduTone Xchange™ is a 2011 CODiE “Best K-12 Education Solution” award-winning, Web 3.0 Platform-as-a-Service technology that enables on-demand, one-to-one services delivery in the Education Enterprise.

EduTone is a DBA of VIP Tone Inc., a privately held corporation headquartered in Alameda, California. For more information, go to: http://www.EduTone.com

About K12Complete: K12complete provides transformational e-Commerce solutions to public and private schools nationwide. K12complete’s innovative online storefront enables schools to eliminate inefficient cash and check transactions, to simplify revenue management, and to increase community participation in fundraising efforts. K12complete also partners with leading educational software providers and payment processors to enable a fully integrated, dynamic and easily managed payment processing and e-Commerce solution.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, K12complete was founded in 2010 by a team of dedicated individuals trying to improve the way schools manage funds. For more information, go to: http://www.k12complete.com

EduTone intends to keep GGfL as a wholly-owned subsidiary, and to integrate its products and services with the award-winning EduTone Xchange Platform, enhancing its collection of third-party licensed digital education content, creating global and regional content marketplaces, to be marketed to schools through distribution partners globally.

GGfL will also represent EduTone in Europe, Middle East and Africa, complementing EduTone’s current presence in the United States and Australia.

The coming together of these two organisations will create a unique force in the education market,” said Robert Iskander, CEO of EduTone. “As the role of technology in schools continues to increase, we are pleased to be able to provide our partners and customers with one of the most comprehensive digital educational content collections in the world backed up by a first class integration platform. The passion displayed by both companies to create breakthrough, innovative services that meet the needs of schools is what will continue to drive our product suite forward and fuel our continued growth.

Stephen Bourne, Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press, said: “The Press is proud to have pioneered Global Grid for Learning and we believe that EduTone has the ideal technology base and management focus to accelerate and strengthen its presence in school markets around the world.”

Julian Mobbs will continue to serve as Managing Director of GGfL with Robert Iskander becoming the newly appointed Chairman.

Notes to Editors:

To request interviews, or for further information, please contact:
EduTone: Yanni Kalajakis
Tel: +1 866 901-8663 x9019
Email: yanni@edutone.com

Cambridge University Press: Hannah Gregory, Public Relations Manager
Tel: +44 (0)1223 325544
Email: hgregory@cambridge.org

Global Grid for Learning: Jason Skelton
Tel: +44 (0)1223 325823
Email: jskelton@cambridge.org

About EduTone 
EduTone provides the sustainable technology infrastructure schools need in order to deliver the 21st century teaching and learning environments their stakeholders require. Installed in thousands of schools around the world, the EduTone XchangeTM is a 2011 CODiE “Best K-12 Solution” award winning, Web 3.0 Platform-as-a-Service technology that enables on-demand, one-to-one services delivery in the Education Enterprise.

EduTone is a DBA of VIP Tone Inc., a privately held corporation headquartered in Alameda, California.  For more information, go to: www.EduTone.com

About Global Grid for Learning
Global Grid for Learning (GGfL) aims to connect teachers and students at all stages in education to single sources of digital multimedia content from multiple providers. Its mission is to become the leading digital content broker and supply network for education markets worldwide.

GGfL services provide a safe and reliable way for teachers and students to search, stream and download high quality and copyright-cleared learning resources from trusted content providers. Our growing library of over one million digital multimedia resources makes it easier for teachers to engage, motivate and inspire media savvy students.

Available online and through commonly used learning platforms, portals, and commonly used educational software, GGfL ensures teachers and students have seamless access to the digital content they need, when they need it for anywhere, anytime teaching and learning.

Global Grid for Learning is a wholly owned subsidiary of EduTone. For further information, go to:www.globalgridforlearning.com

About Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Dedicated to excellence, its purpose is to further the University’s objective of advancing knowledge, education, learning, and research.

Cambridge University Press publishes materials for Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) and International Baccalaureate materials, as well as for a number of national educational systems. It distributes books and electronic educational products to nearly every country in the world and has offices in 39 countries. For further information, go to: www.cambridge.org