As Michael Feldstein wrote earlier today, "This is pretty big news.

SunGard Higher Education and rSmart have announced a partnership that could be a big boon for the open source learning management system Sakai.

With this partnership, SunGard Higher Education will offer subscriptions to the rSmart Sakai CLE to its customers, with the hosting and support provided by rSmart in turn.

According to the company statement, "The relationship aligns with SunGard Higher Education's Open Digital Campus vision, which gives colleges and universities more flexibility to choose the technologies, delivery models, and both open source and vendor solutions that fit their unique needs. It helps to provide new options for institutions to extend their current investments, deliver measurable benefits to the constituents they serve, and reduce the total cost of ownership."

As Feldstein rightly argues, this partnership is a win for everyone -- for the customers who'll be able to get full support for Sakai at a much cheaper cost than Blackboard licensing would cost; for SunGuard and rSmart who'll get strong partnership; and for the open source community around Sakai.