Product Description

HarvestRoad Hive® is an independent, federated digital repository system for reusable learning objects. It is independent of the systems that create and deliver content and will integrate with any Learning Management or ERP System. It is federated because it is designed to share content across multiple instances of the application and can extend across other repositories within or external to an organisation. It is highly scalable, capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of users and millions of objects. 

HarvestRoad Hive® supports the next-generation line of performance improvement services focused on integrating best-of-breed learning technologies to store, share, reuse and distribute learning content and digital media. It is a very powerful productivity tool designed to provide significant efficiencies in the production and distribution of learning and training content knowledge and forms the basis of next generation cross border 'global learning exchanges'. 

HarvestRoad Hive® is the best of breed infrastructure application for Web 2.0 digital marketplaces for learning resources and has been selected by IBM as its global solution for this requirement.

Innovation

HarvestRoad Hive® is a highly scalable application designed for very large national level deployments. It comprises a ‘core’ capability and an open, standards-based ‘interface development’ capability. This means that the full functionality of the core application can be morphed into any guise by any user or service agency to suit delivery and integration within the users’ business process, making access to retained and acquired corporate learning knowledge simple to discover and easy to deliver.

HarvestRoad intends to develop a community of ‘utilities’ using the open interface and enable HarvestRoad Hive® to be a very flexible and versatile application suiting new software as a service environment.

Feature wise it enables the user to store and manage any type of digital media independently of how it is authored. It allows unlimited applications while retaining only one instance (and its versions) of each object, leading to significant return on investment on that content and associated infrastructure savings. The system is flexible in the way it manages associated metadata information – the education and corporate digital object equivalent of bar codes – allowing cross-use between communities and fast discovery.

The integration of HarvestRoad Hive® with open source provides users with an exit or ‘content bridge’ strategy from ‘locked-in’ proprietary environments to open, accessible environments. HarvestRoad Hive® has a unique caching system capability that provides cost-effective large-scale national and international level deployments and significant network and cost efficiencies – especially when broadband is used. The system supports rapid content assembly, it has a unique ability to manage single instances of an object and simply refer to the object as a web link (URL). A number of sequenced URLs may make up a course but HarvestRoad Hive® sends only an assembly of those links (perhaps a 10k file) and not an assembly of actual objects (which could be megabytes in size). This means modifying or updating objects on a global basis is a very simple task and bandwidth is only required on demand. In summary, produce and store any piece of content once but distribute and manage it globally.

HarvestRoad Hive® features a very powerful automated collaboration and workflow process, providing quality assurance of data integrity and controlled release for commercial purposes, i.e. it only goes where it’s meant to go! HarvestRoad Hive® has the ability to provide copyright compliance rules and restrictions on the availability of content, allowing for protection of usage and e-commerce implementations as well as intellectual property.

Performance

HarvestRoad Hive® is deployed globally in enterprise implementations across education and defence. It provides repository services for one of the world’s largest examples of eLearning in South America and has been selected by BAE Systems in an enterprise-wide contract. HarvestRoad Hive® is the first Learning Object Repository to receive IMS Global Learning Consortium Conformance to eLearning Standards. HarvestRoad is recognised as a global contributor to ‘open standards’ which is the ability for applications to interoperate between systems and this extends to real user advantage because it offers choice and removes technology as an issue. HarvestRoad software is developed under strict quality assurance processes and procedures and undergoes user testing and conformance before general release.

HarvestRoad Hive® is very robust and highly scalable. It has been benchmark tested at Sun Microsystems performance center in Menlo Park, California during which the application was tested on a combination of Sun Fire Data Centre servers and Sun Fire x86 servers, proving scalable delivery of real-world content under increasing user load. It has also undergone and received certification at IBM’s Innovation Center in Sydney for the ‘Ready For Linux’ and ‘ChipHopper’ initiatives.

The product’s unique caching system capability provides cost-effective large-scale national and international level deployments.

HarvestRoad provides a global 24 x 7 customer support service including consultancy, implementation, training and technical support. A dedicated client and partner website provides access to product manuals and documentation and a growing International Hive User Group benefits from a hosted, dedicated website, open forum chat service and annual conference.

Potential

HarvestRoad has won significant influential contracts in Europe, Latin America and the USA in the Education and Defence sectors. The company is poised to take advantage of its standards leadership position and leverage ‘heavy lift’ partnership relations on a non-exclusive basis with technology partners such as IBM and Sun Microsystems as well as establishing additional business partners to complement its services including consultancy, training and implementation. The company is uniquely positioned to take advantage of export growth opportunities, clear milestones in 2006 include:

• IBM is an equity stakeholder in HarvestRoad and we have established a worldwide marketing andsales strategy for the commercialisation of the HarvestRoad Hive® application as an integral part of the IBM Open Learning Framework for education.

• HarvestRoad was awarded sole stand-alone Learning Object Repository endorsed supplier status for the MiCTA / ATAlliance, a US buying consortium representing 47 US states and worth across all categories more than $30m over 3 years.

• BAE Systems awarded HarvestRoad an enterprise-wide contract for the development of the repository capability of its Trilogi Content Management System (tCMS). BAE Systems has an estimated 70% share of the UK Defence industry and significant global Defence and commercial activities.

• HarvestRoad is a commercial partner with leading US consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton

• The company was awarded a $1.4m AusIndustry Commercial Ready Grant to support development and commercialisation of its digital publishing system for electronic performance systems

• Collaboration with Sun Microsystem’s UK Building Schools of the Future, a 10 year programme estimated at $10Bn

• First product and only Learning Object Repository to received IMS / GLC – Global Learning Consortium standards conformance. IMS/GLC is the globally recognised standards authority for eLearning standards and specifications.

• Additionally, HarvestRoad continues to work with its South American client, The Latin American Institute of Education Communication (ILCE) on the deployment of the Worlds largest eLearning implementation servicing 13 Latin American countries and addressing the learning and training needs of more than 6,000,000 users.

Other information the judges should know

• HarvestRoad was established in 1996 and publicly listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1999 – ASX:HRD. Its headquarters are located in Perth, Western Australia with offices or representatives in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Mexico City, Lyon, France; London, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Atlanta, USA

• HarvestRoad employs 56 people with at least two-thirds of its workforce directly involved in the production and delivery of software.

• HarvestRoad is a technology company and producers of very robust, high quality application software for the education and training environments across all industry sectors – specifically public sector and higher education, corporate, Government - particularly Defence

• HarvestRoad sells direct to its market and also via distribution and marketing partnerships with IBM, Sun Microsystems and Red Hat Linux and Business Partners

• The company is an active global contributor to open standards, participating in committees and boards of international standards organizations and significantly contributing to technically groundbreaking standards conformance research development and implementation. Collaboration partners include: US Department of Defence Advanced Distributed Learning Laboratories, ADL Orlando S1000D / SCORM Test Bed, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boeing, Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, University of Hull and the Australian Federal Department of Education Science and Training.

• HarvestRoad actively supports integration with Open Source solutions, developing one of Red Hat Linux’s first applications and establishing strong global relationships with the Sakai and Moodle learning technology communities.