SumTotal Systems Ships SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.1
SumTotal™ Systems (SUMTE), the largest provider of learning and business performance technologies and services, today announced the availability of the SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.1, the first update of the platform since its launch in December 2004. The new version incorporates multiple new and enhanced functionalities, including enhanced reporting management, new standards support for SCORM 2004, broader offline access and expanded localization capabilities.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (May 11, 2005) - SumTotal™ Systems (SUMTE), the largest provider of learning and business performance technologies and services, today announced the availability of the SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.1, the first update of the platform since its launch in December 2004. The new version incorporates multiple new and enhanced functionalities, including enhanced reporting management, new standards support for SCORM 2004, broader offline access and expanded localization capabilities.
The hallmark of the SumTotal Enterprise Suite is its unmatched flexibility and adaptability. The SumTotal Suite enables organizations to "mold" the platform to the specific characteristics of their business models. For the workplace, it dynamically adapts to an organization's changing needs, including business processes, terminology and workflow and evolving organizational structures. For the learner, SumTotal adapts to the personalized learning, certification and skills development needs of the individual employee. For administrators, the suite offers radically easier administration of learning activities, user organizations, reporting and compliance, as well as unprecedented interoperability and integration with other technology applications and infrastructures - all without the need for programming and customization.
Enhanced Reporting Management
Industry data has shown that the need to easily report on learning and business data is the primary driver in learning management purchases. The launch of the SumTotal Enterprise Suite marked the first time a learning management system incorporated in-depth, dynamic reporting capabilities and a unique, out-of-the-box reporting framework that learning administrators can use directly without requiring the help of database experts. TotalLMS' Report Manager allows organizations to meet a critical need by easily and securely creating a wide variety of reports from any LMS data, effectively measuring the impact of learning activities on a wide range of business metrics and objectives and facilitating strategic decision-making.
Building on this unique capability, SumTotal 7.1 has made it even easier for individual users to design custom reports that fit their specific organizational structures and processes without the need to call in IT resources. With a simple drag and drop functionality, and more than 50 filter options in each report, users can leverage TotalLMS' Report Manager - which comes standard with the product - to configure and generate detailed reports in seconds, with no programming or specialized knowledge required, removing the complexity of traditional, time- and resource-intensive reporting systems. The new release also has expanded the range of ready-made report templates delivered with the system, which include reports for certifications, learning curricula, skills and competencies and content management, among others.
New Standards Support -- SCORM 2004
SumTotal 7.1 represents a major milestone in the company's initiative toward compliance with SCORM 2004, the latest version of the "Shareable Content Object Reference Model," a major learning industry standard. SumTotal 7.1 now enables organizations to deliver, track and report on SCORM 2004 learning content through TotalLMS.
Because it helps streamline the flow and treatment of content within learning technology infrastructures, SCORM allows enterprises to dramatically reduce both the cost of content integration and the time it takes to deliver content across their organizations. SumTotal has long been involved in defining and advocating industry standards such as SCORM. In fact, the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL), the original generator of SCORM, currently uses the SumTotal platform to launch, demonstrate, test and evaluate learning content in one of its Co-Laboratories, which houses large-scale cooperative research, development, implementation and assessment of learning technologies and related products.
Broader Offline Access
SumTotal 7.1 fully leverages the capabilities of the TotalAccess module, which enables offline delivery, interaction and tracking of Web based content. Designed for organizations with dispersed employee populations, traveling sales forces, or limited connectivity, TotalAccess provides offline users with a similar learning environment and experience to that of online users, with learning progress, scores and certifications automatically recorded and stored for later synchronization with the LMS database when the user reconnects to the network.
TotalAccess allows organizations to increase employee proficiency, speed time to readiness and ensure consistency in training and information regardless of employee location or connectivity.
Expanded Localization With a Single Click
Reflecting the increasing globalization of learning initiatives across extended enterprises, SumTotal 7.1 has added support for three new languages -- Canadian French, traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese - with support for several additional languages in development. With a single mouse click, the SumTotal Suite delivers native language interfaces and support for courseware and information in multiple language, allowing organizations to deliver consistent messaging, information and learning experiences to employees, partners and customers across the globe. In addition to the three new languages, the SumTotal platform is localized for US English, UK English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian and German.
Market Response
Since its introduction just over four months ago, SumTotal 7 has generated significant market response. To-date, 33 new SumTotal customers have purchased the platform, 18 existing customers are in the process of upgrading from previous versions and more than 50 additional customers have expressed plans to upgrade to the SumTotal 7 platform in the coming months. These include Vodafone, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Pfizer, Holland America Line, Group Health Incorporated, Qualcomm, Bechtel, Textron, the US Army and many other leading organizations.
"SumTotal, a respected leader in the industry, continues its legacy of establishing innovative learning products and is in a good position to endure through the ups and downs of the industry for many years to come," said Brandon Hall, CEO of brandon-hall.com, a leading learning industry analyst firm.
In its evaluation of the SumTotal Suite in the "LMS Knowledgebase: In-Depth Profiles of 50 Learning Management Systems," brandon-hall.com commented, "This system is ideally suited for large-scale, enterprise implementations, but is easy enough to use for literally any setting. It is definitely worth considering if you are planning a sophisticated back-office integration using Web services. It should be strongly considered for those with extensive HCM/performance management needs. It is also one of only a few systems that offer LMS, LCMS, and virtual classroom capabilities from a single vendor."
"We are delighted to build upon the positive customer response and significant market momentum for the SumTotal platform with the launch of SumTotal 7.1," said R. Andrew Eckert, SumTotal CEO. "Our customers' global learning and business goals evolve as they respond to economic, competitive, industry and other pressures, and it is essential that the SumTotal platform also evolve to meet those needs. SumTotal 7.1 is just the next phase in a product strategy that will continue to produce innovative new capabilities that help strengthen our customers' ability to meet business challenges and achieve bottom-line success."
At launch, SumTotal 7 immediately differentiated itself in the marketplace with a wide range of notable innovations that allow it to react fluidly to changes in organizations and in the marketplace as a whole. Among these are:
Open Activity Architecture (OAA), which allows for streamlined learning management by enabling the creation and maintenance of a single learning curriculum that can dynamically adjust itself into different learning activity combinations depending upon the group or individual learner. OAA allows for seamless management of the movement of those groups or individuals through the curriculum from a single point rather than requiring the creation and management of separate curricula for each discreet group of learners.
Dynamic Domains, which allows for grouping of individuals into a "domain," according to job role, corporate division or other characteristic, in keeping with a company's organizational structure. Learning administrators can easily prescribe and manage specific learning activities based on group or audience membership. Prescribed learning changes automatically and dynamically when individuals change job roles or move to other groups, allowing the correct training to "follow" the learner.
Web Services, which provides unparalleled interoperability with companies' existing, technological environments, whether .Net, J2EE or other environments, and integration with HRIS and ERP systems, content and document management systems and other technology applications. SumTotal also is the first provider in the industry to furnish customers with a Web Services software developer kit (SDK), exposing the majority of the LMS' capabilities to give customers even greater freedom and flexibility to adapt the platform to their organizations.
For more information on the SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.1, please call 1-866-SMTOTAL or visit www.sumtotalsystems.com.