Virtusa wins 2012 WITSA Global ICT Excellence Award

Virtusa Corporation, a global IT services company that offers a broad range of information technology services including IT consulting, technology implementation and application outsourcing, has announced that it has been named a winner of the 2012 WITSA Global ICT Excellence Awards for its Àkura School Management System.

The 2012 WITSA Awards recognises organisations whose use of IT has exhibited exceptional achievement in public sector excellence, private sector excellence, digital opportunity and sustainable growth.

 “Our goal in creating the Àkura School Management System was simple – to bring together school management, teachers, students and parents to enhance the quality of education,” said Kris Canekeratne, Chairman and CEO at Virtusa.

“As an organisation, we are committed to sustainability and it is through efforts like this that we can collaboratively improve education, healthcare and the environment on a global level. We are thrilled to be one of five organisations honoured by WITSA for our commitment to corporate social responsibility.”

“The School Management System introduced by Virtusa is guaranteed to change the landscape of administration within schools around the country,” said Rev. Fr. Sylvester Ranasinghe, Principal, St. Joseph’s College, Sri Lanka.

“It is easy to implement and adopt and will undoubtedly be a fantastic managerial tool to aid principals, teachers and parents in planning and prioritising classes, lesson plans and more. Time spent on manual administration of daily activities can be cut down tremendously and all energy can be focused on improving the children’s education.”          

Honoured in WITSA’s Digital Opportunity Award category, Virtusa’s Àkura School Management System facilitates the daily administrative activities of a school and provides user-friendly dashboards to manage them.

Àkura allows school authorities to maintain operational and master data on teachers, parents and students, and provides an online portal through which teachers and parents can collaboratively view students’ progress. Additionally, Àkura enables school management to track the progress of teachers.

The system includes a free, open source, dynamic web-enabled application that schools around the world can download and install at no cost to effectively and efficiently manage their environments. Easily customisable, the software provides robust security features to define access rights, streamlines attendance recording in schools and offers innovative reporting capabilities.

Developed under Virtusa’s Tech Reach initiative, the Àkura School Management System was initially developed for St. Joseph’s College, Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2011. It was made internationally available in February 2012 and since then, has been adopted by schools and universities in 130 countries and downloaded more than 6,000 times.

Àkura is just one of Virtusa’s many key Tech Reach initiatives that focus on using IT in an innovative way to empower and enhance the quality of life, create opportunities for the community members and unleash the full potential of the community.  

Virtusa’s Àkura School Management System represents an important part of the company’s overall sustainability focus which is based on four pillars: Digital Reach, Tech Reach, Code Green and Campus Reach. Virtusa’s Digital Reach program promotes digital literacy by increasing access to useful information technology, while Tech Reach initiatives allow the company to apply its technical skills to positively impact surrounding communities.