[June 01, 2011]

SchoolForce™ Gives K-12 an Open Technology Choice

Acumen Solutions, an international leader in business and technology consulting, announced today the limited availability of SchoolForce™, the first enterprise class, open Student Information System (SIS) and performance management solution. This cloud computing based application is built on the salesforce.com® Force.com® platform and integrated with Google (News - Alert) Apps. SchoolForce allows schools and school districts to have open access to the source code of the SchoolForce application with the ability to enhance and extend it. SchoolForce is being distributed free of charge* to a limited number of schools and districts in its first release and will then be available via download later this year to all K-12 schools and school districts. Large urban school districts and charter organizations have been the initial focus in this limited release.

"This is a game changer in K-12 technology. For the first time schools and districts can access state-of-the-art technology, greatly enhancing our productivity while saving us time and money," said Jennie Niles, Founder and Head of School, E. L. Haynes Public Charter School. "After helping us review all the existing systems out there and coming up empty, Acumen Solutions offered to develop a system that would solve all of our problems and provide us with a tool upon which we could continually innovate. As far as I'm concerned, SchoolForce is a miracle." Niles added, "With SchoolForce's open platform and approach, schools can own their data and will no longer be at the mercy of closed systems from traditional software vendors."

E.L. Haynes Public Charter School is a recognized thought leader in education reform and one of the recipients of the Race to the Top funding. Leaders from the school advised Acumen Solutions on education industry best practices and provided the educational design requirements for most modules. E.L. Haynes is using all available modules of the SchoolForce solution. A large urban school district has also purchased a Reading Assessment module from Acumen Solutions and they are in the process of implementing this solution to track and analyze student reading performance.

What is SchoolForce™?

SchoolForce is the first enterprise class, K-12 Student Information System (SIS) and performance management solution built on the salesforce.com® Force.com® platform and integrated with Google Apps. The solution is built upon open standards and is delivered via the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS (News - Alert)) model, with a soon to be delivered marketplace of education applications that can be deployed on-demand for each customer. The solution includes core Student Information System (SIS) modules such as: attendance, behavior, homework, student records and a Common Core compatible grade book as well as collaboration and document management - all of which can all be shared with parents and students via a web portal. SchoolForce represents a significat technology shift for measurement and tracking of K-12 students, teachers and school performance by leveraging state of the art cloud computing technology from salesforce.com and Google and combining it with a robust cloud-based data warehouse and analytics tool.

"State and local governments are under enormous pressure to improve the performance of their students with an ever shrinking budget," said Daniel Burton, senior vice president of Global Public Sector, salesforce.com. "Using SchoolForce on the Force.com cloud computing platform gives teachers and administrators the tools they need to succeed."

The solution requires the school or district to have a salesforce.com subscription, but the customized applications built for schools are free. Acumen Solutions is encouraging all SchoolForce users to share any code they develop as an extension of the core solution with others in the K-12 community.

"SchoolForce has been another way of giving back to the community for our firm," David Joubran, CEO, Acumen Solutions. "We support education reform in America as a technology firm who depends upon a well-educated workforce. We believe that it will positively impact our community and the future of all Americans and we are committed to making it available to all K-12 schools in the U.S."

* Requires a Salesforce.com subscription.

About the Force.com® Platform and the AppExchange®

Force.com is the only proven enterprise platform for building and running business applications in the cloud. The Force.com platform powers the Salesforce CRM™ applications, more than 1,100 ISV partner applications like those from CA (News - Alert) Technologies, FinancialForce.com® and Fujitsu (News - Alert), and 200,000 custom applications used by salesforce.com's 97,700 customers such as Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE and Sprint (News - Alert) Nextel. Force.com also enables developers to make any enterprise app social by leveraging the social collaboration components including profiles, status updates, and real-time feeds available with Chatter.

Applications built on the Force.com platform can be easily distributed to the entire cloud computing community through the salesforce.com AppExchange 2 marketplace now featuring the ChatterExchange.

SALESFORCE, SALESFORCE.COM, APPEXCHANGE, FORCE AND FORCE.COM are trademarks of salesforce.com, inc. SCHOOLFORCE is used with the permission of salesforce.com, inc.

About Acumen Solutions, Inc.®

Acumen Solutions helps Global 1000 corporations and government agencies solve their complex business and technology problems on a daily basis. By offering innovative business process solutions, strategy and technology know-how, our experts provide organizations with measurable results. We are recognized leaders in helping our clients weave cloud computing strategy and integration into the fabric of their existing enterprise architecture. In addition to spearheading opportunities in business, our social responsibility commitment enables our employees to become leaders in our communities. Acumen Solutions has been in business since 1999 and is headquartered outside Washington, D.C. with offices across the U.S. and Europe. More information can be found at: www.acumensolutions.com.

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