There’s a new TV show “Around the World in 80 Ways” that challenges 2 guys to use 80 different modes of transportation to circumnavigate the globe. We’re not trying to do that, but we do want to see our SCORM solutions adopted around the world and eliminate the hurdles that come with internationalization.

Shortly after we launched SCORM Cloud, we began to get questions from our friends in Europe about whether we were Safe Harbor compliant. As the requests grew, it prompted us to do 2 things- find out what the heck the European Commission’s Directive on Data Protection is and why we need to be safe from it, and to take a closer look at where our customers are located. Here’s what we found:

In a nutshell, Safe Harbor certification ensures that U.S. companies comply with the EU directives on the protection of personal data. We take data security and privacy very seriously- regardless of where our users are, so going through the certification process was a no-brainer. And as of last week we are officially certified as Safe Harbor compliant. For more details, check out our privacy policy and Safe Harbor compliance.

Looking at where our customers are and the ways we support them uncovered some interesting stats. We were surprised to have so many friends around the world- 82 countries represented. Below is a breakdown of where most of our SCORM Cloud users live.

Supporting a global customer base can be challenging- especially when you consider language complexities. We recently updated our website to support 17 translations, and our SCORM Engine now supports over 16 languages. Chinese? Yep- 2 versions.

So, the world of SCORM continues to grow and the complexities on delivering our services grow too. We’re up for the challenge and invite you to join us in our travels.

The Challenge

LINGOs is a consortium of over 60 international humanitarian relief, development, conservation and health organizations. They provide the latest learning technologies and courses from industry leading partners so their non-profit members can increase the skill levels of their employees, thereby increasing the impact of their programs.

While LINGOs provides a robust, hosted platform to administer the courseware, some members have additional needs that require using other LMS solutions. For those organizations, LINGOs needed a way to deliver their course library to the member’s external LMS, while still controlling access to the content.

Enter SCORM Cloud with Dispatch

LINGOs partnered with Rustici Software to manage the delivery of the content. By using the Dispatch feature within SCORM Cloud, LINGOs member organizations can access the LINGOs course library within their own SCORM-compliant LMS while LINGOs continues to retain control of distribution and access to the content.

“Rustici Software has been tremendously supportive of LINGOs and SCORM Dispatch has been an invaluable tool for us. It has enabled us to maintain control of the intellectual property that has been generously made available by our corporate partners, while allowing our members to make independent decisions regarding the LMS that best suits their needs. SCORM Dispatch allows us to accommodate those decisions without costly and time-intensive custom interfaces.” — Eric Berg, Executive Director, LINGOs

Get the full story on LINGOs and see how their members are using SCORM Dispatch to enhance their learning initiatives.

Click here to see how SCORM Cloud and Dispatch can help you manage your content distribution.

Some of our customers prefer to tuck their use of our products away, and we’re fine with that. But others want to scream from the mountaintop that they’re using the best SCORM conformance software available. If you’re a screamer, then we want you to let the world know that you’re using our stuff. We’ve waded through all the legalese and created a way for you to do just that.
 

“Powered by” images are now available for you to put to work. Just visit our “powered by” page and grab the HTML or files for print that you need.

We’ve provided 3 sizes for each image, but we understand that there will be exceptions. If you need a different size or format, just email support@scorm.com with your needs and we’ll get a custom image made for you — pronto.

And starting in 2011 (or thereabouts), Blackboard is going to be rocking the SCORM Engine in Blackboard Learn.

We are nothing short of thrilled to announce that Blackboard has signed a long term agreement with Rustici Software to deliver all SCORM and AICC based material in Blackboard Learn, their flagship product.

Ultimately, we’ll let Blackboard tell their story of why they opted to go with the SCORM Engine, but this is what we know.

• Blackboard had a prior SCORM delivery setup based on an open source SCORM implementation, and they found it to be inadequate in supporting their customers.
• Blackboard considered building their own SCORM implementation, but realized they could do it better and more cost effectively by working with us.
• Blackboard considered other commercial SCORM technology… briefly.

Blackboard’s adoption of our rock solid SCORM technology will make things better for Blackboard learners and those people who provide content to Blackboard. This is a huge step for us as well toward one of our long term goals:

Rustici Software would like to provide the technology that makes every SCORM transaction go.

Consider this an invitation to all of the big LMS providers. Each LMS provider that adopts the SCORM Engine reduces the pain associated with eLearning for the industry as a whole. Blackboard’s adoption of the SCORM Engine is a big step toward our goal.

For more on Blackboard’s commitment to SCORM and open standards in general, check out today’s blog posts by Ray Henderson and John Fontaine.

In fact, we’ve got big, huge, gargantuan news regarding SCORM Engine, still the player of choice for great e-learning applications. And now, it’s the choice of Odijoo, which is on the verge of releasing with SCORM Engine in place.

Not familiar with Odijoo? They’re a free web-based eLearning platform (soon to be SCORM 2004 and 1.2 conformant!) that allows users to have their own personalized online space from which to create, publish, share and monetize online courses. It’s a pretty cool service for people who don’t need their own installed LMS, want an easy way to create a course or look to make money distributing content.

Odijoo just launched back in October and quickly discovered a need for people to be able to import previously created content. And … well, since part of the point of using SCORM is to be able to easily play content across systems, SCORM moved up the to-do list to become the next step in Odijoo’s evolution.

The big bonus in this scenario for Odijoo is the tolerance we build into our players. Fewer headaches as people begin bringing in content created in a wide variety of tools and for a wide variety of LMSs.

Welcome to the Rustici Software family, Odijoo!

Concepts of listening and improvement, though, need to extend beyond the core products themselves. I’ve been working with a prospect on the SCORM Engine, working toward contractual agreement. In doing so, he discovered what he felt was a hole in our agreements. Specifically, he couldn’t find any route by which he could opt out of the agreement if we failed to hold up our end of the bargain.

Incredulous, I told him I was sure it was there, but that I would check in with our legal staff at Waller Law. Wouldn’t you know it, the basic document we’ve been using for years doesn’t include that specific right. Well, frankly, if we’re not doing what we indicated we would, what right do we have to lock you into your deal? The answer, obviously, is none.

So, all of our basic agreements have been changed and we’re moving forward with some new language. Specifically,

Customer may terminate this Agreement if Licensor is in material breach of its obligations under this Agreement and such breach is not cured within thirty (30) days of receipt of written notice from Customer describing the breach in reasonable detail.

If we’re wrong, well, we’re wrong. So, changes have been made to our “annotated legal documents” as well, section 7, if you care. [If anyone cares, the annotated legal documents have been great for us. Prospects seem to love them and I'm not answering the same questions all the time anymore!]

One customer who obviously took that to heart was ELogic Learning. ELogic has licensed two of our products, the SCORM Engine and SCORM Untethered. The news of the day, though, is that ELogic’s eSSential version 8.22 was recently certified by ADL. Check out the formal certification notice here. Completing an LMS certification is no small task, and we congratulate ELogic on their accomplishment.

We’re also excited to note that no fewer than three of the first twelve LMS’s certified for SCORM 2004 3rd Edition use the SCORM Engine as their delivery mechanism.

My name is John, and I’m a TestTrack-a-holic. I think it was the great hair band Cinderella that sang, “Don’t know what you got till it’s gone”.

After spending the entire day without Test Track, I realize how much life sucks without it. Having to test all day on [major LMS provider name omitted] was not fun.

thanks guys,

Rustici Addict #871

For us, customer service isn’t about a 12-step quality improvement program, formal policies or sending out a monthly newsletter, it’s more about just doing what’s right. Our clients pay for and receive top of the line solutions. Along with those solutions comes top of the line service and support. We’re a small company and maybe we’re a bit old fashioned, but I believe that any of our customers should be able to pick up the phone and chat with Tim or I about whatever is on their mind and that we should do whatever it takes to ensure their satisfaction. The customer may not always be right, but the customer always deserves to be heard and have his problems addressed to the best of our abilities. D&B only surveyed 20 customers, but had they surveyed them all I’m confident our rating would remain high. Many would suggest that such an open service-oriented business model won’t scale well and would provide a huge drain on valuable internal resources. So far that hasn’t been the case, we currently have about 100 customers using our SCORM products. These products reach millions of learners and yet our support “burden” has remained minimal. I’ve been reflecting a bit on how we pull this off, how does such a small company exceptionally serve so many customers? The quick answer is that our products just work. We take a lot of pride in producing high quality software which doesn’t need a lot of attention. We’re tightly specialized and deeply knowledgeable so we can be very focused and exceptionally good at what we do. We also hire tremendous personnel, without them, we could never achieve all that we have.

You can see the details of our Open Ratings evaluation on their website at: https://prod.openratings.com/certified/index.pl?page=duns&orderid=1176041.

From a personal perspective, I find the work we did with SDA Studio Kft fascinating. Ten years ago, we never could have found each other. Today, we were able to complete a full SCORM implementation in the context of their existing application from thousands of miles away without meeting face to face on a single occasion.

Congratulations to SDA Studio Kft on their accomplishment and dual certification.