Sakai is a collaboration between the University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, and the uPortal Consortium that blends the best of each institution’s disparate software and synchronizes the development, adoption, and use of an integrated collection of open source tools.  Sakai Project products will include a complete course management system with sophisticated assessment tools, a research support collaboration system, and a clear standard for writing future tools that can extend this core set of educational applications. 
The potential impact of this project for higher education institutions and the field of open content is tremendous. Institutions long for an effective and adaptable tool but have been constrained by market options. This project takes the best of what individual higher education institutions have developed and allows all to contribute to one high-quality open source system.

The creation of a set of pre-integrated, modular, open source software is attracting the interest of a large number of higher education institutions, both large and small. To support the wide adoption and use of Sakai, Sakai Educational Partners Program (EPP) is being developed to manage the participation of many interested institutions and sustain the Sakai work products after the initial core development ends.

The Hewlett Foundation supports the Educational Partner Program, providing an avenue for broader use, both initially and ongoing, of the final Sakai products.